


it's human nature

by notavodkashot



Series: all of me and all of you sit down quietly in the dark [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Animal Traits, Berserkers, Blood and Gore, Cor is The Best Puppy, Gore, M/M, Magic is harsh and always comes with a price, Politics, and his pack of murderous lightning death cats, being human is hard, professional murder kitten wrangler, the wondrous adventures of Cor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 03:40:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 70
Words: 26,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13227348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notavodkashot/pseuds/notavodkashot
Summary: A collection of short fics from my prompt drives, all set withinthe nature of the beastcontinuity.





	1. Drautos/clarus pov of the meet the king scene from the puppy au, or Cor pov of same/first mission?

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm putting all my short fics in one place. I'm including the prompt for each of them.
> 
> These are canon to the main fic, unless otherwise stated in the notes, and probably don't make sense if you haven't read that one.

Clarus thinks this is a terrible idea born out of Regis’ incurable romanticism and his preternatural need to be an asshole. He’s made it abundantly clear, every step of the way. Still, the King commands and the Shield obeys, and so here they are.

He’s been keeping an eye on the Galahdians and on Titus’ increasingly less subtle jabs about it.

Clarus knows, objectively, that only Cor stands a chance to control them in the field, but he’d much rather have Titus in charge of them elsewhere. However, it’s also a well known fact that Cor and Titus do not get along, and Cor plainly threatened to retreat back into the wilderness rather than take one order from Titus. The truly ridiculous thing, in Clarus’ opinion, is that Regis not only took the threat seriously, but chose to accommodate it.

And now here are the Galahdians, not bowing to their King, speaking like equals and making light of  the terrible situation they’re all in. And of course Regis is amused by it, because Regis is an asshole who enjoys things being difficult, which would explain why he’s also so incredibly fond of Cor, who makes everything difficult, every goddamn step of the way.

Clarus reminds himself he cannot in fact scream at the Marshal for running his mouth in public, and compromises with the impending disaster by burying his face in his hands and promising solemnly to corner Cor before the day is over and tan his fucking hide into a rug for the audacity.

This is going to be a disaster, he knows, it can’t possibly be anything else.


	2. Cor’s first time shifting in front of Regis & co.?

“I really don’t think-” Clarus began, clenching his hands tightly around his sword.

“Shut up, Clarus,” Regis replied, slowly approaching the figure curled up against the cave wall. “We were starting to wonder where you were,” he told it, in a softer voice, raising his palms in what he hoped was a placating manner when the wolf whimpered and pressed hard against the rock.

It was a scrawny ball of fluff, but it was easily the size of a garula. They’d gotten used to see it trailing about, as they scourged Cleigne for signs of Cor. Clarus had run it out, the first night it’d approached their camp, but even after that, it still kept coming back. Weskham cracked jokes about Regis being rich enough to keep that kind of pet, but Clarus kept insisting they shouldn’t let it get used to them. If that was a cub - and it was, it had the roundness and the softness, even if the size didn’t match up - there stood to reason there was a mother, somewhere. And who wanted to deal with that?

Still, even as they continued trying to find their missing fifth member, scouring the wilds for trails or anything to point them in the right direction - Clarus was determined to find Cor, because Clarus felt responsible for him leaving in the first place, but even Cid and Weskham were starting to accept the fact it had been months now, and the kid was very likely dead now - they’d grown used to seeing the wolf around. Weskham even threw him left overs, whenever Clarus wasn’t looking.

“Regis,” Clarus said urgently, as Regis dug his fingers into the soft, motted fur - bits of gray fading into a deep black beneath. “Don’t-”

“It’s got a broken leg, Clarus,” Regis snapped back, glaring at his Shield in exasperation, “what do you want me to do?”

“If it’s too hurt to survive on its own,” Clarus replied, trying for sensible but not quite making the mark, “then perhaps it would be kinder to put it down.”

The wolf whimpered, pulling away from Regis to press itself further into the rockwall, though it really didn’t have anywhere to run to. 

Regis stared at Clarus and, holding onto his stare, summoned a potion to his hand and smashed it on the wolf’s head.

Then Cid smacked Clarus upside the head and dragged him out of the cave in a headhold, possibly to teach him the nuances of tact and consideration. Regis made a mental note to do something nice for Cid when they got back home. He owed Cid a staggering number of nice things, at this point, so one more wouldn’t hurt.

“And I suppose to expect me to feed it,” Weskham muttered with a frown, looking down at his Prince and his Pet, with the fond, put-upon expression that never failed to make Regis smile back at him. “Fine, but we’re visiting Felsi’s farm to resupply and you’re paying for every bit of it.”

Later that night, after dinner and two more of Clarus’ attempts to suggest they should leave the wolf behind - he’d stop suggesting they use force, at least, which told Regis all he needed to know about the smug-vicious glint in Cid’s eye - they sat around the fire and watched the stars from the mouth of the cave. Regis sat among his friends, the wolf’s head resting on his thigh, and dug his fingers into the thick fur, slowly coaxing the skittish beast to sleep.

It relaxed, bit by bit, but they could tell precisely the moment all tension left its body.

Mostly because it’s body began to shrink and lose most of the fur.

“Oh,” Regis said quietly, staring at the boy snoring away into his thigh.

Then he looked up at Clarus. Actually, everyone was looking up at Clarus. Clarus took this with the required aplomb and merely paled until he was nearly transparent and swayed dangerously where he stood.

Then Cid cracked up, cackling like a hyena as he leaned heavily on Weskham to keep himself upright, while Weskham stared down at Cor with that same, thin-lipped expression that was three quarters impressed by whatever bullshit their teenage companion could pull off, and entirely fucking done with it. Regis’ youngest, though hardly weakest of his retainers curled up further into his side, hiding away from the noise.

It was going to be a very long night, that.


	3. nyx’s first shift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [I’m borrowing rather heavily from Witcher 3′s version of berserkers, when it comes to Galahdians shifters. (TW for the video: it’s bears eating people. It’s a videogame, but it’s still a wee bit graphic. So Blood, Gore, and uncomfortable things.)](https://youtu.be/hibLEWSwxjQ)

He’s fifteen when Selena’s chosen to succeed the dying Wise Woman of the island. His sister’s scared of it: the responsibility, the blood, the weight of expectation.

He’s fifteen when he promises to be there, on the first ceremony she leads. He’s never wanted to participate, before, well aware of the balance of risk and rewards. He’s never had a reason to bet his life on a coin toss like that. But it makes Selena smile, when he tells her, and she promises to do her best, to complete her training and truly become Wise.

He’s seventeen when he sits with her in the field, still damp with dew, the sun barely a whisper of orange in the horizon. He echoes the words with her, trying to sound as certain and sure of himself as he can, and his hands do not shake when she cuts open her palm and bleeds into the cup. They don’t shake when he takes it from her or when he tilts it back and presses it into his mouth. He doesn’t spit it out, because he’s not supposed to, because she’s right there, because he said he’d do this.

He’s seventeen when he hears the heavy footsteps on the grass, the slight crackle of electricity running down the length of whiskers.

He’s seventeen when the first bite comes, straight into the back of his neck.

He’s seventeen and the last thing he remembers, before the crunch of bones consumes his world in darkness is that she doesn’t scream. She doesn’t falter.

He’s seventeen when he finds himself standing in a puddle of his own blood, the remnants of his old self, and he has perhaps a moment to feel extremely creeped out by this, before his sister throws herself at him and very nearly tackles him to the ground.

“Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?” He asks, because he’s an idiot and she loves him, and she’s laughing and she’s crying, but it’s okay.

_It’s okay._


	4. Maybe something about the Galahd pride meeting CId, and him just laughing at them or taking mercy on them and giving them a How to Understand the Stubborn Brat eg Cor.

“He should have stayed with you,” Nyx tells Cid, sitting on the steps leading back to the wilderness beyond Hammerhead, beer slightly lukewarm and expression fierce in the early evening light. “Cor,” he says, not looking at Cid, not looking at the expression on his face. “He should have stayed with you, instead of Clarus and the King.”

“I did offer,” Cid admits, looking up at the stars popping up one by one in the vast darkness of the sky. “He didn’t say no… but then words are never what really matters, with that boy.” He snorts. “Why you care, anyway? If he’d stayed with me, you’d never met him.”

“Probably,” Nyx agrees, “but he would be better. Happier.”

“You’re in love with that mutt,” Cid points out, not quite gently, but not quite disapprovingly. “Aren’t you.”

Nyx swings back the rest of his beer and shrugs, refusing to answer. But then, words have never been what truly matters about him, either.


	5. hunting down some food

“Yeah,” Cor said unsympathetically, even as he held Nyx’s hair back while he hurled painfully into a bush. “I learned that the hard way too.” When Nyx merely gave him a tear-eyed glare, Cor shrugged. “If you eat while you’re shifted, you need to… finish  _digesting_ , before you turn back.”

“Rude,” Nyx scoffed, between gasping breaths, “I’m not done puking, stop making me laugh.”

Cor gave him one of those bewildered looks of his, like he couldn’t decide if Nyx was being serious or not, but before Nyx could clarify, he was hurling again.

“So that was a thing,” Nyx mused, sitting on the nice, plushy rug in Cor’s cabin, feeling a little less gross and miserable after a shower. “Shit.”

“It happens,” Cor said, almost philosophically, and pressed a mug of hot tea into his hands as he dropped down to sit next to him with a mug of his own. “Don’t know about coeurls, honestly, but wolves will eat a lot of things that humans probably shouldn’t.”

“See, this is what I mean when I say you keep setting me up for stupid questions,” Nyx pointed out with a snort, and blew off the hot steam coming off the mug, “which I’m still gonna ask because I literally can’t help myself. What the hell did you eat and how badly did it kill you?”

Cor gave Nyx one of those tiny, amused smiles of his and shrugged.

“Bones, mostly. Marrow tastes good…  _really_  good, but only when I’m a wolf. I don’t really like it otherwise.” Cor snorted. “You got off easy, though. You were eating guts. That’s… easy. To pass through. Try puking up bits of bone the size of your hand.”

“Well,” Nyx said after a moment of silence. “That’s a horrifying mental image, thanks.” He took a sip of the tea and nearly puked all over again. “Holy shit, this tastes like ass.”

“Because you’re a connoisseur of that,” Cor muttered wryly, if only to watch Nyx splutter a helpless laugh.

“Shut the fuck up,” Nyx groaned, covering his face with one hand. “why am I drinking ass tea?”

“Because you ate half a Garula raw and then puked out most of it,” Cor replied, shrugging. “It’ll make you feel better.”

“That’s an excellent point but I feel like shit and I’m actively trying not to think about taking a literal shit as a coeurl, because I don’t think they make litter boxes that big, so you’ll excuse me if I ignore your points, good or not, and continue to complain about  _shit_.”

Cor laughed at that, the nice laugh that was relaxed and amused and Nyx only ever heard when they were alone and as far away from the Citadel as possible. He scooted over, purposefully slow so that Cor had warning, and then leaned in to rest his head on a thigh, half curled on his side. There was a moment of hesitation and quiet, and then strong, deft fingers dug into Nyx’s wet hair, just like he’d been hoping they would.

“You’re an idiot,” Cor said fondly, quietly.

“Takes one to know one,” Nyx retorted, basking in the warmth slowly spreading from his belly out to his limbs, as the tea worked its magic on him. “Mangy mutt.”


	6. court shenanigans

It takes Nyx approximately ten seconds to remember why everything on the banquet table is purple. Then another five to keep himself from cackling like a loon until he falls to the ground. Everything is purple. Everything. The tablecloth and the plates and the food. Sweet Ramuh’s withered balls, the  _food_.

“I love this city,” he says, which gets him a torrent of giggling from their host and her entourage.

Later, after eating and drinking and a whole lot of talking in circles like only Lucians know how, Nyx finds himself strolling along the lake in the Kings’ personal hunting grounds, hands stuck in the pockets of his pants. He finds Cor stretched out on the meadow by the cabin, a veritable mountain of black fur breathing slow and steady even though Nyx knows he knows he’s there, because he can’t hide the twitch of is ear when he approaches, and Cor’s ears happen to be massive enough Nyx would need to be pretty damn blind not to notice.

“Your people,” he says, leaning in to stare at a large blue eye, hands on his knees, “are really fucking stupid. I love it.”

Cor yawns, baring his mouth open wide enough he could swallow Nyx whole in one bite, and stretches lazily before settling back down. Nyx takes the invitation for what it is, and drops himself into the cradle of Cor’s fur, laughing as he starts retelling the highlights of the evening and the fact everything was purple.

 _Everything_.


	7. couerls have no idea how to react to Cor as he doesn't die when they try to one-shot him

There’s something profoundly amusing in keeping track of them, that moment when the rage’s faded down enough they’re no longer murdering everything that moves in a two mile radius, but not yet relaxed enough to shift back. Mostly because he’s keenly aware they’re not there. It’s instinct, and nothing else.

Still, there’s a shadow of personality to them, something distinct enough that even if he couldn’t smell them, he’d know who’s who immediately.

Pelna likes to sit down and watch the proceedings from a prudent distance, for example. Cor has only ever needed to forcefully calm him down once, and that was mostly because some dumbass hunter kids wandered too close. Pelna’s the one Cor worries the least about, in the field, mostly because he’s the sneakiest and invariably the first one to run out of rage and turn back, once the job is done.

The rest of them, though. The rest of them are just a mess of vicious playfulness and Cor is so very glad he’s got fur thick enough the whiskers can’t reach through it, because the sheer amount of times he’s gotten zapped is obscene. Libertus is a biter, too, and Cor keeps forgetting until he’s got the bloody bastard hanging off his back or his neck or one particularly unpleasant time, his  _ear_ , teeth sinking into fur as deep as they’ll go. Crowe and Nyx are,  _at least_ , easily distracted, once they stop being so mad they want to electrocute everything and everyone and Cor is forever amused that the most daunting part of the job is wacking them in the face with his tail, and then watch them try to murder it for a while.

Honestly, the hardest part of every job is Axis, if only because Axis is a murderous beast while human and he’s not very nicer when he’s not. Cor’s found the best way to deal with Axis is just to sit on him. Just. Bury him in his bulk. Cor has been threatened several times over this, but since Axis has yet to actually shiv him in his sleep, he thinks he’s probably fine.

Probably.

He watches Pelna shift back, until he’s sitting comfortably on the grass a few yards away, and Cor shares a look with him, trying to maintain his dignity with four coeurls hanging off his person… well, not his actual person, that is, but the body he happens to be occupying at the moment, at least.

He imagines Drautos trying to deal with this, trying to even deal with just reports of this, and he huffs a breath that would be a meanspirited laugh, if he were human.


	8. a cute something about puppy!Cor when he was an adorkable fluff?

“Don’t you dare,” Clarus hissed, trying to stare down Cor as the brat wagged his tail at him, head bowed as if preparing to lunge at him. “Don’t you fucking dare, Cor, I will  _tan_ your fucking hide.”

Cor panted open-mouthed, mouth purposefully full of slobber, but his eyes were dancing. Clarus let out a triumphant laugh as he managed to anticipate the pounce and dodged out of the way. Then he shrieked shrilly when Cor pivoted with unnatural ease and his entirely too solid body collided with him and toppled him to the ground.

“I’ll make you into a  _rug_ ,” Clarus snarled, as Cor held his mouth inches from his face, drool gathering dangerously on his tongue. “A FUCKING  _RUG_!”

“He tried to bathe him again, didn’t he,” Regis said, coming to sit next to Weskham and Cid at the edge of the haven, the front row seats to the whole spectacle.

“Well,” Weskham said, one eyebrow arched, “he did spend all morning rolling around in mud.”

“That was  _after_ the bath,” Cid pointed out, snorting, “mind.”

Regis tried and failed to contain a laugh, and winced as Clarus shrieked again.

_**“Coooooooooooooooooor!”** _


	9. puppy Cor meeting Serena

It’s the smell that gets him.

To be fair, his nose has been guiding him for twenty years now, and it has yet to steer him wrong. But he expected her to smell like Nyx, or something close to it. Something abstract and… rain-y. Wet but warm, and also clean. The kind of smell he enjoys trailing after.

She smells of storms, instead.

Not lightning or rain or salt. But storms, the kind that leave the world in shreds, after they’re done.

She’s small and bright and carefree, always smiling and always welcoming, the same way Nyx and the others are. There’s nothing noteworthy about her, except her scars, and even those are only scars. But the smell remains, boiling under her skin, threatening that corner of his mind that is more wolf than man, telling him to retreat, to stay away.

Even Regis, blood rushing with the remnants of the crystal’s magic and all that it entitles.

Even Regis does not smell of bottomless wrath barely held back.

“You will look after him, won’t you?” Selena asks him, eyes bright and smile easy, just as easy as most of Nyx’s are. “My brother,” she clarifies, as if it was ever in question, and she smiles at him in a way that Cor knows would have his fur standing on end, if he weren’t currently folded inside his human bones. “You’ll look after him, won’t you?”

She’s not threatening him. Not with words. Not with gestures. But the  _smell_. He doesn’t look up at the sky because he knows the sun is bright above their heads, with that piercing summer heat that makes one drowsy to stand beneath it too long. But his nose keeps telling him the clouds will darken and ripen any moment now, that he should be feeling the pelting of icy rain on his skin. Beneath it all, his nose tells him he’s a very small thing before something too massive for him to comprehend, and he should go away and wait for the storm to pass.

He cannot, so he shrugs instead.

“I’ll try,” he promises, keenly aware not to offer anything more than he knows he can handle, and not in a hurry to figure out what happens if he fails.


	10. Cor interacting with Nyx while he's a coeurl?

“Oh, shit.”

Cor doesn’t think, he just moves. The really interesting thing, in retrospect, is that his first instinct is not to shift. His first instinct is to reach out with his hand, grab one of the long whiskers, and  _yank_.

Nyx makes a sharp, pained noise, lunge aborted before it could really start, and then hisses at him. Cor blinks for a moment, considering the whisker is clearly not sparking, and tugs again, gentler this time.

“I’m going to need you to go, right the fuck now,” he tells Regis, while carefully holding Nyx’s unnervingly inhuman stare. “Because I’m not sure what happens when I let go.”

“Right,” Regis says, backing away from the clearing slowly.

Nyx bares his fangs slightly, lips and ears twitching as he tries to turn his head towards Regis, and Cor tugs again. He feels mildly ridiculous, to be honest, holding onto a thick, surprisingly silky rope of fur that tingles dangerously under his skin. He’s also drunk on adrenaline and the fact he doesn’t have fur to shield him, should Nyx decide to free himself forcefully.

Cor swallows hard and then slowly lowers himself to the ground. After a moment of hesitation, Nyx drops down as well, far more gracefully. It’s nearly an hour, before Cor’s grip relaxes enough for the whisker to slip through his fingers. It cracks like a whip and smacks him in the face.

He blinks, still keenly aware he’s still, in fact, alive.

Nyx rolls onto his back, stretching, and then back again, lying on his side like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

Cor gives up and laughs, face buried in his hands.


	11. Nyx and Cor, quiet winter mornings

“It’s a cabin,” Nyx says with a loud snort, “it’s some kind of sin that it doesn’t have a fireplace.”

Cor shrugs, sitting on the counter and watching him fuss with the stove with with a lazy smirk.

“Never needed one,” he says, one eyebrow arched, “before.”

Nyx stares at him.

“Please tell me you don’t actually sleep outside in winter,” Nyx says, in a tone that implies he’s aware Cor would be lying if he said so, but that still invites him to do it anyway.

Cor smiles wryly, and shrugs pointedly, again.

“In the  _snow_?” Nyx insists, “there’s at least four feet out there.”

“It’s better when there’s more,” Cor says indolently, “better to burrow into.”

“How are you not  _dead_?” Nyx asks quietly, pouring them mugs of something that smells spicy and sweet and weirdly warm, to Cor’s nose. “I’m  _offended_ at the fact you’re not dead, holy shit.”

“You’re being dramatic,” Cor points out, lips tugging insistently into a smirk. “Melodramatic, even.”

“I’m the body and soul of good sense, thank you very much,” Nyx deadpans, and then put a mug in Cor’s hands. “Shit, I think my toes just froze at the thought of sleeping out there.”

“Fur, Nyx,” Cor snorts, and bumps a knee against Nyx’s side playfully. “Which you also have, mind. Who knows, maybe by next year you’ll be able to judge for yourself.”

“Cor,” Nyx says, staring at him in the eye. “You couldn’t suck my dick hard enough to make me even consider willingly sleeping in snow.”

Cor smiles.

“Well, there’s a challenge, if I ever heard one.”


	12. Puppy verse- cover stories- for Cor’s antics, for the Galahd crews antics, anything

“A knitting club,” Drautos says, in the very put upon tones of someone who’s two seconds away from punching Cor in the face for his bullshit. “ _A knitting club_.”

Cor would like the pompous twit a lot more if he dared, but Titus Drautos is the kind of person Cor isn’t: the sort that knows how to handle hierarchies and social mores and understands the importance of not throwing a tantrum at one of the King’s best friends

Titus likes  _politics_ , it’s insane.

Consequently, Cor feels about as much remorse lying to him as he does pissing off Clarus on a good day.

“Great stress reliever,” Cor deadpans, hands in his pockets an expression pleasantly blank. “You don’t even know.”

“You had a knitting club meeting, with the Galahdian envoys, in Duscae,” Titus says, “precisely the same week that Aracheole Stronghold was decimated by an unknown force.”

Cor stares at Titus in the face, arches both eyebrows, and shrugs.

“Yes.” Titus looks like he’s about to throw the first punch, at long last, but then he deflates, sighing loudly and letting his shoulders slump. Cor sighs. One day… one day. “Excuse me, we have another meeting starting soon.”

“For your knitting club?” Titus asks snidely, voice deadpan.

“Oh, no,” Cor replies, “just your run of the mill orgy.”

The splutter makes it worth it. That and Nyx’s face when he recounts the meeting, later.


	13. glowing mushrooms

“You,” the old woman said, in the sharp tone of reprimand, and Cor winced, head dropping slightly, tail firmly tucked between his legs, “oh, you foolish boy, what have you done this time?”

Cor whined, but approached slowly, carefully, and then gently tipped his body sideways, allowing Nyx to slide off his back onto the ground. Nyx made a gurgling noise in the back of his throat, and laid where he’d landed, focusing on breathing, first of all.

“Oh, that’s not good, no,” the woman said, walking over and kicking Nyx’s side to flip him onto his back. Nyx groaned but didn’t protest otherwise. There was a pause as she ran her fingers over the largest gash, rubbing the blood between her fingers before licking it. She grimaced. “This will take effort to fix. Blood and herbs. Mushrooms, I should think. You’ll bring them to me, and you’ll bleed for him,” she said, and Cor nodded slowly, ears still folded back against his skull. “Go to the Thicket. Down by the waterfall, shielded from the sun by the rocks. Make that nose useful and bring me the ones that are ripe.”

Navigating the thicket as a wolf was not an appealing option, but the alternative was worse. Cor vanished into the treeline, steps careful and head bowed, and pretended not to hear Kimya scold Nyx for the great sin of needing to be rescued.

It’d be fine.

He just needed to find the mushrooms. Bleed a little.

Everything would be fine. 

Then he’d yell at Nyx over this, until he felt better about it. That seemed like a sensible plan.


	14. Does Puppy!Cor think or feel differently about baby!Noctis?

The boy laughs as he cartwheels around the clearing, leaving behind him a faint imprint of blue light. Nyx cradles the mug close to his hands, soaking up the warmth as he watches the young Prince zigzag around, while Cor does his best to close his teeth on the vague after images he leaves behind. Nyx knows Cor, sometimes more than he wishes he did. He knows the labyrinthine turns of his mind a lot better than he knows his own. It takes a special kind of trust, for Cor to fight someone for the joy of it. The kind that is gnarly and twisted and rooted profoundly in that well of loyalty he has and he doesn’t want anyone to know even exists.

The young Prince is too young to understand the meaning of the games he plays, and Nyx envies him a little.

He’ll be a fine King, one day, and they’re going to serve him. Cor already does. Nyx supposes he does as well, because it’s their thing, after all. One leads, the other follows, and they take turns pretending they know what that means. Nyx sighs, taking a deep breath and then a deeper gulp of his coffee, before he places it on the wooden steps leading up to the cabin.

Then he stands. Walks. Shifts.

“Hey!” The Prince cries out, warping out of the way as Nyx pounces the ground with a growl, whiskers sparkling at the tips. “Seriously?” Cor huffed an amused scoff, almost a snort. “Two on one? How’s that fair?”

It’s not, Nyx would like to point out. But then, nothing really is. That’s the whole point. He snarls a laugh at the Prince, pouncing again. To his credit, he warps again. Away. Straight into Cor’s mouth.

“You both suck,” the Prince informs them, warping up into one of the tall, ancient trees surrounding the clearing. “A lot!”

The trees are tall, but Cor can leap higher. The Prince shrieks a laugh. Nyx lays down, studiously unassuming, whiskers waving lazily at each side. It’ll be what it is, and nothing else.

But hey, at least they can make the most of it and get a good laugh out of it.


	15. Puppyverse- wolf!cor and coeurl pard shenanigans. Just long suffering keeper!cor and his group of furred idiots

Cor stared at his charges and sighed, head hanging slightly as he did, but not enough to lower it to the ground. Certainly not enough to inhale the pale, murky fog clinging to the grass and which had reduced Cor’s companions to… well.

Giant, bumbling, drunken-looking electric cats, high as kites, on whatever the hell was clogging up the ground.

This was divine punishment, Cor decided, for retaliating to Nyx’s endless barrage of dog puns with a bag of catnip. (The look on Nyx’s face had been worth it, as had been the fact Cor had actually managed to make Axis laugh sincerely over it.) …which admittedly was a wholly heretical thought to have, considering the circumstances. But then pretty much all of Cor’s entire existence was a heretical joke in some manner at this point, and that did not help with the fact he had five fully grown coeurls to look after and they kept not doing what he needed to do, which was mostly get the fuck out of the cloud of fog that had them stumbling and sprinting, sometimes at once.

Later - much, much later, many tiring, trying hours later - Nyx and the others woke up buried beneath a mountain of fur inside a nondescript cave somewhere at the edges of the swamp.

They tried to crawl from under Cor’s solid bulk, and Cor declined helping, if nothing else because he was tired, he’d been bitten a whole lot more than he cared to be, and the frizz around his ears still hadn’t dissipated yet, because apparently they kept trying to greet him the same way they greeted each other, which would be fine if not for the bit where they did it with their whiskers and kept aiming for his  _throat_.

They could fucking deal with waiting until morning for food and perhaps an explanation. Maybe. If Cor felt like being magnanimous about it.

Libertus had the fucking nerve to  _drool_ on him. (Not just on him, apparently, considering Crowe’s hissing somewhere under his ribs. But still.)


	16. Some more of Cor being the little shit we know he is at Dratus

Titus Drautos likes his world to make sense. He likes knowing who he’s fighting and what he’s fighting for. He likes to read the paper in the mornings and drink tea late in the evening while he fills in the answers of the crossword puzzles he spent the entire day chewing on. It’s the nice, methodical bits of his life that keep him going, in light of the recent war and the political chaos the King is trying his best to navigate.

Titus… doesn’t dislike the King, not actively, not enough to not fight in his name. But Regis rubs him wrong, in places, and it’s not just because of what his father did. Regis is quiet and cagey and inscrutable pretty much always, whatever truth he believes in hidden behind that veneer of quiet, complacent charm that itches at the back of Titus’ head.

But he is not a monstrous King, nor a cruel or foolish one, and despite all his misgivings - which are many - Titus does not think it wrong to serve him.

He’s not the kind of man who plays favorites, Titus knows, because otherwise he’s fairly sure he would not be where he is today. He’s rational and calculating and incredibly shrewd whenever he forgets himself - if he forgets himself, even, Titus is not sure everything he’s seen in his King hasn’t been deliberately shown to him - and most of the time, he knows what he’s doing, one way or another.

But then there’s Cor, and all of Titus’ carefully crafted workarounds for his instinctual dislike of his King come crashing right in because what the fuck is even going on with Cor?

Before the Galahdians came in on their “diplomatic” mission, Titus had seen Cor maybe a grand total of twenty times, always shadowing the King in whatever public event he chose, and then vanishing as soon as the King retreated back into the Citadel. It’s not like he does anything, either, when he deigns to show his face. Titus never really cared about him, because no one else did, either. Apparently he’s a friend of the King, a remnant of his father’s Crownsguard, or some such. Which… isn’t good, not really, and doesn’t really help Titus’ sinking feeling that Cor is not to be trusted, which has only truly manifested itself since the King deemed him responsible to look after the Galahdians.

He’s around more often, too, these days, and Titus can’t help but feel it’s like a bad omen of sorts, running into Cor around the Citadel, because invariably some irritating news will be waiting for him, regarding his troops and the frontlines soon after.

He’s also owner of a pretty fucking abysmal sense of humor.

“Leonis,” Titus says, in his best neutral tone, standing outside the King’s study for an urgent briefing he’s already dreading.

“Drautos,” Cor murmurs back - murmurs, doesn’t mutter, which is significantly less snide than his usual and sends alarm bells ringing in the back of his head.

“You seem less tense than usual this morning,” Titus points out, peering down his nose at the lack of perpetual squinting scowl on Cor’s face.

“Sex will do that to you,” Cor deadpans back, staring at him right in the eye, and it’s only sheer pride that makes Titus choke back a splutter, “apparently.”

Titus is saved having to answer by the Shield opening the doors to the King’s study. The morning somehow manages a way to get even worse.


	17. Nyx realizing just how not fine Cor is

Cor flinches, when Nyx drops an hand on his shoulder. He does that pretty much every time someone touches him in human form without him expecting it, so Nyx politely pretends he doesn’t notice. He supposes it makes sense, if Cor is truly used to being… well, in wolf form most of the time. Being human, by comparison, would be a level of vulnerable that obviously makes him uncomfortable.

But that just makes the little incident a few hours all the more poignant.

“Wanna talk about it?” Nyx asks, coming to sit next to him, keeping his hand on Cor’s shoulder as he folds down into the rug and offers the mug in his free hand.

“Mm,” Cor replies, frowning as he stares down at the contents of the mug. “Reminded me of something,” he says, after a moment, when Nyx keeps waiting without pushing. “That’s all.”

“Mhm,” Nyx replies, not quite convinced.

“I was with the King, when the coup happened,” Cor says, after a very long moment, frowning. “Mors, I mean. I… was there, when it went down. It… did not go well.”


	18. Nyx has lost something precious out on a mission and cors nose can find it!

Nyx bolts awake with a smack of heavy cloth on his face. He flails as he reorients himself, sitting up and clenching his fingers around the fabric in his grasp. Then he registers it for what it is - the long, almost liquid rope of threads he carries pinned to his shoulders, less a cape and more the impression of one, trailing after him like the whiskers do when he shifts - and he stares at it, dumbfounded. The feeling redoubles when he notices Cor, standing at the edge of the old haven, pale and naked under the moonlight, watching him carefully.

“You went back for it?” Nyx demands, trying to convince his legs to stand upright, as his grip on the scarf turns significantly more reverent at once.

“It’s important to you,” Cor replies, in that toneless voice of his, the one that’s not sure of the consequences of his actions and is thus bracing all the same.

Nyx considers his words carefully, the stress of the last few days weighing heavily on his tongue.

“Thank you,” he says instead, because it’s simpler and more honest, and they both could really use that, for a change.

Cor is already melting back into fur, momentary vulnerability purely for Nyx’s sake, it seems. He settles himself on the old, dead runes carved on the stone, curling around Nyx with the ease of practice. Nyx lets him, thumbs rubbing tense circles on the silky cloth that are meant to soothe but don’t quite manage.

Cor huffs a low breath, burying his nose into the crook of a hind leg, curled up into a tight, suffocating ball of warmth. Nyx melts into it, and doesn’t laugh purely because they’re meant to sleep, now.


	19. Do overs/try again/"we'll get it right this time."

“We could use Cor,” Clarus says, at length, once their cups are empty and the reports are read, as they sit in the cavernous silence of Regis’ formal office, which was his father’s before him, and still carries in it the weight of his presence. “If it comes to that.”

Regis knows Clarus speaks from a place of concern, of mockery, of despair. This war is a war they can ill afford, and the longer it stretches the tighter the noose around his neck. He knows. He understands. He knows Clarus means it in jest, a ridiculous, unlikely thing they’ll never consider.

He remembers Cor, when he returned from Galahd to find his house in ashes, his father dead and his city in a riot. He remembers Cor, lying in pieces under Cid’s care, eyes sunken and soulless with the untold monstrosities his King commanded him to do. And which he did. Every single one of them. No matter how monstrous, no matter how vile. The King commanded, and his Hound obeyed, and deep down Regis regrets that he didn’t switch them, in the end, Cor and Clarus, when it came time to go hide. It would have hurt Clarus, to be left behind, but his father would not have felt entitled to use him the way he’d used Cor. Clarus is an Amicitia, hallowed blood of the Shield, loyal and honorable and above all,  _human_.

One does not use a Shield to murder, anymore one can hammer a nail with a saw.

But a beast? One tame enough to obey and still fierce enough to kill? Oh, his father had made use of that, alright. And Regis knows, he does, that Cor’s much more than that, has proven himself time and again. But he never was more than a beast, in his father’s eyes. A beast of a boy, first, with his too long sword and his too sharp smirks and his too jaded eyes that knew at fourteen what Regis wouldn’t learn by twenty. And later then, wrapped up in fur, with claws and fangs and size. Where Regis saw a friend, his father had only ever seen a tool, sharp and trained and willing.

He should have taken Cor with him, when he left for Galahd. He should have known it couldn’t happen any other way. He shouldn’t have needed Cid, bloodless and furious, to describe it to him to the last sordid detail.

Regis remembers Cor, his friend, his failure, his penance.

The worst thing, the absolute worst thing, is the certainty that he would do it. If Regis went out now, right now, half drunk and mad, in the middle of the night, and sought out the pile of fur and bones slumbering somewhere deep in the royal hunting grounds, if he stood tall and asked Cor to leave Insomnia and lay waste to the Empire for him… he would.

He  _would_.

“I promised I would do better than that,” Regis says, low and somber, “when I took him in, instead of telling him to go back to Cid. Because he wanted to serve me, and I promised I’d never let him, not the way he served my father.”

Color has fled Clarus’ face, expression contrite.

“I only meant-”

“We  _must_ do better,” Regis insists, licking his lips, “even in jest, my friend, we must  _be_ better, if nothing else because the bar has been set so low.”

“Why  _did_ you let him stay?” Clarus asks, frowning. “If you agree he would be better off with Cid.”

“Because he wanted to stay,” Regis sighs, lips twitching. “How could I claim to not be my father if I deny him the very first thing he asks of me? The only thing he’s ever asked of me?” Regis laughs, short, sharp, bitter, it makes Clarus flinch. “He thinks so highly of me, that I’ve come to rely on that… to measure my efforts and gauge my success.”


	20. Axis' thoughts on Cor

Pelna knows that look. He knows that slight snarl, just a hint of teeth, and the glimmer of malicious glee in his eyes. He knows.

“Axis,” he says, sighing, trying to stop the inevitable because at this point he’s expected to at least try.

“Just looking,” Axis says, eyebrows arched, and lets Pelna tug him down to sit in a sprawl by his side, “that’s all.”

“It’s never just  _looking_ ,” Pelna points out dryly, fingers woven into his hair, tugging sharply but not unkindly, “and he’s Lucian.” He pauses significantly. “Lucians  _break_ , Axis.”

“Probably,” Axis muses, unrepentant, and watches Ulric get his ass handed to him for the seventh time in the hour. “But I bet he’d like it.”

“Lucian,” Pelna insists, though he knows damn well it’s a weak argument at best: Cor is the least  _Lucian_  Lucian they know.

It’s probably why they like him so much.

“Lucians marry for sport but don’t know to fuck for fun,” Axis pointed out with a snort, “though the King did say we should teach them the  _Galahdian_ way.” Before Pelna can even begin explaining everything wrong with that sentence, Axis adds, almost spitefully: “Ulric would dig it.”

Pelna scoffs, mostly because he doesn’t have a good counter argument for that.


	21. Coeurls inside the Citadel

Cor realizes the molten, homicidal rage boiling in Nyx’s face before Clarus does. He’s slightly mystified by it, to be honest, considering how little Nyx seems to care about…well, anything.

Clarus continues marching ahead, steps stiff and stride enormous, rushing towards the King’s office without rushing at all. Clarus is talking, of course, because of he always is. He’s chewing out Cor for this or that nonsense that doesn’t really matter and which Cor doesn’t even listen to at this point. All of Clarus’ lectures are the exact same, after all, heard one, heard them all, and Cor has heard more than one.

Nyx still looks like he’s a hair away from shifting, slit-blue eyes near glowing.

They turn down the corridor. There’s a lot of large, empty ball rooms - one for each season, which has always confused Cor somewhat, considering all balls are the exact same thing every time anyway - and not a lot of people around. There’s also streaks of white in Nyx’s hair, so good on Cor for not imagining things.

“And for fuck’s sake,” Clarus says, pausing to give Cor a withering glare, “wear a  _shirt_.”

Clarus turns back towards the long corridor. Cor throws himself bodily at Nyx, remorselessly colliding onto him, mid-lunge (and mid-shift), and shoves him - and himself - into the nearest empty room. Clarus doesn’t seem to notice, which is a great thing, considering Cor is now effectively hugging the face of an angry, sparkling coeurl that keeps hissing violently into his chest.

“Nyx,” Cor says, fingers digging into the coarse fur behind the horn-like growths around his face. “Stop.”

Nyx pulls back enough to bare his teeth, threatening a roar as the whiskers whip up behind him, tips sparkling dangerously. Cor stares impassively down at him, completely lost as to what could have possibly driven the man into a rage like this, but also somewhat confident that he isn’t in any real danger. Nyx shifts slightly, as if considering pushing past or around Cor to reach the hallway.

“No,” Cor says, folding his arms over his chest and staring straight into Nyx’s eyes.

Nyx growls again, lips twitching around the tips of his fangs, and then he pushes forward, great big head rubbing into Cor’s folded arms insistently until he’s nearly thrown back off his feet and the only option, clearly, is to scratch the murderous bastard behind the ears.


	22. Noctis & Friends

“…we brought peace offerings,” Noctis says, blue eyes looking up at Cor through the fastidiously unkempt bangs he’s refused to slick back just because someone suggested they made him look un-Princely.

Behind the young Prince, Clarus’ son is giving him a vaguely hopeful look. And behind  _them_ , the quiet blond that served the Nox Fleurets and the fretful looking young man who seems to have adopted him since his arrival. Their peace offerings seem to be several cartons of something that smells greasy and spicy in turns.

“Council meeting?” Cor guesses, eyebrows arched curiously.

Noctis shrugs eloquently.

“Worse,” he says, “it’s my birthday.”

Cor winces sympathetically.

“He is trying,” he says, because he’s supposed to, or at least he feels he should. “Your father.”

“A little too hard, yeah,” Noctis wrinkles his nose with a snort. He sighed. “I’ll go to the stupid ball tonight and even wear the dumb fancy clothes and I’ll even pretend to want to be there, alright? I just want to hang out with my friends today. …just for a bit.”

“Fine,” Cor says, lips twitching into an amused smile, “just for a bit.”


	23. Cor's Not Alright (At All)

“You don’t  _look_ thirty,” Crowe says accusingly, pressed up against Nyx’s side, with Libertus’ head pillowed on her lap and Libertus’ bulk stretched out along the couch, knees bent on the armrest.

Cor has no place to judge, really, considering he’s sitting on the floor, back comfortable against the plush side of the couch and one of Nyx’s legs hooked over his shoulder, anchoring him in place. When Axis and Pelna come back into the room, they sit on Nyx’s other side. Well, Pelna does, and Axis sprawls against him and nudges Cor’s shoulder with his foot.

“I did say  _about_ thirty,” Cor points out, shrugging and leaning against Nyx’s knee. “So a year more or a year less, I guess.”

There’s a slight pause.

“You  _guess_.”

“There was a war going on at the time, you might recall,” Cor mutters somewhat snidely, and right on cue there’s fingers on his scalp, almost pacifying, “things kind of fell by the wayside while we were fighting it.”

“The only war would be the War for the Dawn,” Pelna points out, one hand preemptively wound into Axis’ hair. “But you’re  _thirty_ , you’d have to be-”

“The official story is twelve,” Cor replies, shrugging. “Give or take a year.”

“You were  _twelve_ when you joined the army,” Libertus deadpans, not quite sure what emotion go with for that.

“Oh no,” Cor snorts, shaking his head and tilting it back to blink at them. “I tried to join earlier and they kicked me out. No, I was twelve when the King took me in.”

There’s a long silence, after that.


	24. Cor gets hurt, his kittens take it poorly

Cor doesn’t fight. Not really. He’s a safety net, between them and the rest of the world, but he doesn’t really engage their enemies if he can avoid it. And even when he can’t, he stalls until they can get to them. Libertus asked about it, during those first few skirmishes, while they were still skittish around him and didn’t know where they stood with each other and with him. Cor had only said the King had told him not to fight, so he didn’t, and the revelations since then, everything they’ve seen and done, they have forced them to accept that’s probably a good thing.

So Cor doesn’t fight, not really. And most of the time, they don’t need him to. The MT they fight are trained to fight people, they’re not very good at fighting monsters, much less vaguely sentient monsters with the ability to not only remember but learn how to  _better_ take down their outposts, after each battle.

So Cor sits somewhere in the vicinity and waits for them to do their thing, their thing being wanton destruction and absurd property damage. He only steps in, if they do something dumb, or they’re done and they haven’t shifted back yet. It’s all fairly mundane, fairly familiar. They know what’s going to happen and how things should go, and it’s… it’s almost routine.

Then Cor gets shot, during a run into a nearly completed base.

They wake up a few hours later, slumped together against the broken remnants of a wall, of what might have once been a base, tired and sore. There’s a lot more scorch marks on the ground, and a general sense that they’d somehow overdone things, just a little. It’s a bit awkward, because there’s five of them and only one of him and he’s still somehow trying his best to hold them, as if he’s worried they’ll sink back into the rage if he doesn’t.

“I don’t think coeurls understand the concept of potions,” Cor says wryly.


	25. Cor has to carry one or more coeurls by their scruff

Cor figures it out by accident. He’s trying his best to move them out of the swamp and into somewhere safe they can turn back, and not being very successful. They squirm and shock him whenever he closes his teeth around them, and he’s… afraid of hurting them. It’s a strange, ridiculous thought to entertain, but he can’t quite get rid of it.

Then he tries to grab Crowe and she slides between his jaws, until he’s holding onto the scruff of her neck, the loose skin and fur right above her shoulders, and she  _stops_. Cor nearly drops her, before she stars purring, going limp and docile in his grip.

He lets her go, gently, slowly, but she doesn’t lash out, merely chirping at him in that weirdly high-pitched voice coeurls use that sounds almost childishly petty to his ears. He tries again, and she starts purring again, and then he tries on Axis - Axis is difficult, basically always, so of course he tries with him - and the results are the same: docile, limp bags of purring fur and bones.

It’s still five fully grown coeurls high as kites on whatever the hell’s growing on the mossy floor beneath them, so it’s still tedious and tiresome. He still gets shocked every now and then, as he tries to shuffle them together like one of those ridiculous riddles he read somewhere once, about a farmer trying to take a fox, a hen and a sack of seeds across a river on a boat that had some pretty dang arbitrary restrictions about what could or couldn’t be carried in it.

If he could laugh, he’d laugh, to be honest, but it’s not the time.

Placing Nyx into the cave, along with the rest, feels like a personal victory. A very hard earned personal victory that he’s probably not going to share with anyone ever, because they purr when he carries them, and don’t stop even when he smothers them under his weight. They start grooming him instead. That’s almost nice. Axis kneads his claws on his back. That’s  _definitely_ nice.

Then they start greeting him.

The way they greet each other.

Which is jabbing their goddamn whiskers into his throat because they can’t reach his actual face - which might actually be for the best - and shocking him, and it doesn’t hurt but he’s building up static and his ears are puffy and today might possibly be The Worst Day he’s had, since this assignment began.


	26. Ignis and novelty bakeware

“…I thought of you when I saw it,” Prompto says, and he’s doing that thing he always does, fiddling with the little gold chain around his neck.

Ignis stares and goes through the habitual mental cul-de-sac of being terribly distracted by whatever mysterious thing hangs from that chain, and then he blinks.

“Where did you even find such a thing?” Ignis asks, head tilted slightly to the side, trying to procrastinate on how to best phrase his thoughts on the ridiculous rolling pin, hopefully into something that isn’t embarrassing for anyone involved.

“Noct… Prince Noctis,” Prompto corrects himself, blushing slightly at the slip, “Prince Noctis wanted to… explore the city, for a bit.” He shrugs a little helplessly. “…so we did.”

“You took the Prince outside the Citadel,” Ignis says, eyes wide. He can’t decide if he’s impressed or horrified or a weird, concerned version of both with just a dash of outraged wounded pride that he was not invited along.

Prompto winces.

“Technically,” he says, lips curved into a lovely half-smile, “his Shield did. I think I was supposed to be the scapegoat, if we got caught.” He laughs, soft and quiet and restrained, and Ignis doesn’t think about him laughing louder, fully, looser, because then his thoughts run into ridiculous knots. “But we didn’t, so I was just the one who had an actual thing to buy in the mall. They were very gracious about it.”

“You needn’t have bothered,” Ignis says, and it sounds just about right, casual and respectful and not at all desperately moved, like the inside of his chest.

Prompto’s smile gains another sliver, three quarters full.

“You needn’t have made me soup,” Prompto points out, and there’s the thing again, the ghost of teasing and playful and secretive, teasing Ignis just out of reach. “I appreciated the gesture.”

“Any time,” Ignis replies, a bit too quickly, perhaps, but Prompto keeps on smiling, keeps on fiddling with the chain, keeps on not making sense, and if Ignis had a lick of sense he’d pull away and focus on his duties or his prospects, but the crux of the matter is that he doesn’t want to. “Sincerely, Prompto, any time.”

Prompto’s smile wanes slightly, shy.

“I’ll keep it in mind.”


	27. Nyx losing control and Cor getting worried about how long it takes him to change back

“We’re gonna have to talk about this, huh,” Cor told Nyx, digging his fingers into the underside of his jaw, by now utterly unfazed by the certain death trailing at the tips of his whiskers. If anything, this little misadventure kind of cemented the certainty in his head, that Nyx was never going to actually hurt him. At least not while he was shifted anyway. “An actual conversation and everything.”

Nyx continued to purr low in his throat, eyes closed and body sprawled sideways, arching into Cor’s hands. It was an improvement, he supposed. Though he still wasn’t willing to risk trying to stand up. Last time he’d tried, Nyx had sat on him, and honestly, Cor was a lot less able to handle him doing that when he was human than when he wasn’t. He sighed, resting his chin atop Nyx’s head, eyes sliding half-mast.

He disliked getting shot, he’d decided. It hurt, for one thing, and Cor was uniquely unused to things actually hurting.The bulk of his time was spent in a form that seemed almost by design impervious to damage, and what time he spent in human form, he spent mostly reading, so the worst he risk were papercuts. Though admittedly that had changed at some point, after the Galahdians became his primary task. Now he spent time sparring with Nyx, who gave as good as he got and fought dirtier than Clarus ever would, and consequently unlike anything Cor had ever fought before. Nyx hit pretty hard, pretty much always, but it was fun and it didn’t really start hurting until about three hours later, and by then he was usually curled up with a book or curled up by the lake, literally, and it didn’t really register that much.

Getting shot, on the other hand… well, getting shot  _sucked_.

So far it had been mostly a matter of choking on profanity, when it happened, and remembering enough of himself to pull out a potion from the stack Regis kept stocked even to this day. It was fine. It hurt like hell, but it was fine. His companions? Friends? They did not take kindly to it, though. Nyx certainly didn’t.

Cor sighed.

“Take your time,” he said, feeling the body under his hands slowly shift as the coeurl breathed deeply, slowly, and still not enough to let go of Nyx. “I’ll be here when you come back.”


	28. King Mors, Long Live The King

“Lucius is dead, Your Majesty.”

Mors stares down the boy, one knee on the ground, one arm thrown on the other thigh, one hand holding onto the sword he carries around more for misdirection than any real use. Cor doesn’t need a sword, to be dangerous. It’s one of the things Mors likes best about him, the underhandedness of it. The efficiency.

Anyone else would deliver the news of the Shield’s death with somber, solemn dignity. Anyone else would consider Mors’ feelings on the matter, the sheer blow of losing his oldest friend and staunchest supporter, the man who saw him through the madness of defying Gods and prophecy and who stayed by his side regardless.

Cor is not a man, for all he looks the part right now. Cor delivers the news the same way he tells Mors everything: in that quiet, toneless deadpan of his, which convinces the King every day there’s no task too gruesome, no risk too great, for his pet soulless abomination to tackle. He looks fifteen but he’s not. He’s  _not_. Mors remembers Regis, when he was fifteen, willful and reckless and alive. Cor stares at him the same way he’s always done, expectant and dead, eyes as empty as the day they met. When Mors orders, he obeys, like any good dog would, and it doesn’t matter what he looks like, because that doesn’t change at all what he is.

“When,” Mors asks, voice quiet, hands clenching the armrests of the throne.

In his hand, the finger where the Ring once sat itches, and his blood boils but there’s no spark left in him, his magic gone today as it has been since the day he turned it on its source.

“Half an hour ago,” Cor replies, still staring down the floor, because he knows better than to look up at his King. “He stayed at the courtyard to stall them, Your Majesty, and give me time to reach you.”

“So you didn’t actually see him die,” Mors says, betraying at last a ghost of something childish and almost human, like hope.

“Didn’t need to,” Cor says, immutable, impassive, “could smell it when they got him.”

Mors licks his lips, holding back a snarl.

“You can smell them, too, I suppose,” he says, trying to gather aplomb and think and reason, and for the first time in years, he misses the weight of his Ancestors’ magic at his fingertips.

No unruly mob could ever hope to face the Armiger and survive.

“Yes,” Cor replies, and takes a moment to breath deeply. “They’re in the atrium.”

Almost as if to punctuate his statement, the doors to the throne room shudder as they’re subject to the push of human bodies in a swarm.  Mors doesn’t have the crystal ghosts of the Kings of Old to protect him anymore. But then, perhaps he doesn’t need them.

“Cor,” he says, eyes narrowed, as the boy stands up to attention, and he’s so convincing at looking fifteen, were Mors a different man, he’d feel regret. Instead, he says: “You know what to do.”

His Shield is dead. His council has abandoned him, pledging their support to the uprising. His Heir is gone, hidden so far out their reach, he might not even come back to reclaim his throne. His birthright ring has rejected him, for his choice to refuse the call of prophecy. His crystal is dust glittering in the air itself.

But still, his Hound remains.

When the doors burst open at last, splintering against the ground with a deafening sound, it is not a soulless child who stands between them and their King, fangs bared and aching to drip blood.


	29. Cor plays fetch. Sorta.

“This is wholly inappropriate,” Clarus said, because Clarus was a wet blanket who had no sense of humor and honestly, Regis thought he should know better by now anyway.

Cor sprawled on the grass before him, head low and tail swishing slowly back and forth, considering. Regis was pretty sure the dumb mutt wasn’t actually aware of the fact his tail telegraphed pretty much everything he was thinking the moment he thought about it. Regis felt terrible for the fact he actually appreciated that, if nothing else because Cor had been pretty damn inscrutable before, whereas he was a wide open book these days. A very furry, very large book, at that.

“Duly noted,” Regis said, twitching his fingers as he summoned the Armiger to him, crystal weapons bursting into being all around him. “Thoroughly ignored, for the record.”

Cor shifted, back legs folded  properly beneath his body, his paws kneading the ground, and his ears thrown forward, focused.

“Magic could be a limited resource now,” Clarus insisted, looking put out, “for all you know.”

“Your  _face_ is a limited resource,” Regis retorted with a snort and threw an arm forward, weapons whistling in the air and aiming high above Cor’s head.

Cor leaped out to grab them anyway. He was a lot limber than his size would imply. A lot faster and quieter, too. He made tiny sounds of frustration as he tried his best to catch Regis’ glaives.

“What does that even  _mean_?” Clarus demanded, clearly unamused by Regis’ impeccable display of wit.

Regis rolled his eyes.

“If it makes you feel any better,” he said, looking over his Shield while Cor tried his best to grab the shuriken - he always went for the shuriken, Regis had no idea why, but it was delightful and he hoped Cor never grew out of it - with a combination of paws and maw, “we can call it training.”

“ _Urgh_ ,” Clarus replied, eloquently, and then spent the next hour and a half pretending not to be thoroughly amused by their antics.


	30. Nyx discovers Cor's love of funky tea infusers.

“And I was  _so mad_ ,” the girl behind the counter ranted, rolling her eyes dramatically, “because they’re the cutest thing, they have like… fins and everything! And they’re full of the crappiest goddamn Earl Grey you’ll ever find. Full of lies and suffering, hon,” she insisted, pointing a finger up at him with a dramatic sigh. “I do not stock up lies and suffering in my shop.”

Nyx watched as the corner of Cor’s lips twitched as he arched his eyebrows.

“Except for the whole, quote-unquote  _organic_ oolong fiasco last year,” Cor said, looking by Nyx’s best estimates as relaxed and amused as he’d ever seen him.

It was a little mind-blowing.

“You know, I start to let myself think you’re cute,” she says, dryly, “and then you open your goddamn mouth and I remember you’re an  _asshole_.”

Cor laughed. Actual laughter. Nyx watched in fascination as he leaned on the counter and smirked in the face of the unamused-looking girl. Then the moment passed and they were back to talking about vintages and aging and soil, and bickering amicably over giant tins of mashed greenery that Nyx supposed was meant to be made into tea. He wasn’t, to be honest, all that into tea. But Cor was, and there was something to the fact he’d invite Nyx along, something shapeless and terrifying almost like trust.

When she marked up Cor’s stuff - about ten tiny cans that were apparently filled with different types of tea even though every single one of them looked and smelled the same to Nyx - she very much didn’t mark up a box full of novelty trinkets.

“See you next month, hon,” she said, smiling kindly - Nyx decided he liked her, right there and then, even if she was as weirdly obsessed about tea as Cor apparently was - because Cor smiled back, tiny and almost shy. “you tell me how that new mix treats you, alright?”

Cor nodded and waved and then headed outside, with Nyx in tow. He didn’t explain. It was the thing, with Cor. He never explained. If Nyx wanted to know, he’d have to ask, and then he’d have no one but himself to blame, when he knew and didn’t know what to do with that knowledge. There were a surprising amount of things about Cor he knew, these days, that filled up his lungs with the ghost of mindless rage if he thought too long or too hard about them.

And this one thing, this one thing made Cor  _happy_. Nyx wanted more than anything for this thing to be clean. Teethless. Cor liked tea and the shop owner where he bought it gifted him novelty bits and pieces and talked about incomprehensible tea stuff with him and called him  _hon_ and Cor  _smiled_ about it. Nyx needed this so desperately to be as good and wholesome as it seemed.

But then.

Cor.

“What’s that for?” Cor asked, as they waited for the light to change so they could cross the street and head back to the subway, when Nyx wrapped his arms around him and buried his face into the back of his neck, breathing in deep as if to calm himself.

“Because,” Nyx snorted helplessly, suddenly overcome with the urge to protect someone who very clearly did not need protecting, because he was some twenty years too late for it to have any meaning. “Just…  _because_.”


	31. Did Mors ever ask Regis to do something to Cor that he regrets?

“He’s  _thirteen!_ ” Regis snaps, sick and tired of trying to politely sidestep the argument.

His father stares down at him, impassive, with just the barest hint of disappointment twitching at the corner of his mouth, and Regis hates the fact it stings, even now.

“Congratulations, you’ve managed to grasp at least that much, I see,” Mors says, tone bored and uninterested, and Regis does not flinch back from it, because  _he_ isn’t thirteen anymore and still hoping to one day earn his father’s approval. “What’s your point?”

“My point-” Regis splutters, dumbstruck for a moment by the sheer disregard in his father’s voice. “My point is that I’m not taking a fucking thirteen year old  _boy_  as cannon fodder with me!”

“He’s not,” Mors says, quietly. “A boy,” he adds, when Regis looks almost too expectantly at him. “He’s not a boy, Regis. Don’t let his appearance trick you. You will not reign long, if you don’t learn to see the truth of things. Their nature.”

Many years later, so many years later, Regis would forever regret not arguing his point further, rather than merely walk out of the room in disgust. He’ll regret his childish, naive good intentions, thinking he could take Cor away and protect him from the King.

He’d forgotten, of course, that it was very hard to take the King away from you, once you let him sink his claws in.


	32. Cor receiving gifts from his electric murder cats

Axis… well, Axis’ coeurl, at that, wants him to join the fight.

Cor realizes this when he keeps dragging broken, sparkling, still twitching MT armors and dumping them at Cor’s feet, giving him exasperated looks. Cor hadn’t known what exasperated looked like, on a coeurl.

He ignores it, at first. Because… well, Cor ignores most of his problems until they’re no longer problems and honestly, Cor is not one to try and fix what isn’t broken. He ignores Axis as best he can, even when he keeps bringing scraps of the battlefield, chirping at him to get him to do… anything really.

It would be fine, really, if the rest didn’t start picking up on that, and started doing it too.

It’s not like Cor’s particularly concerned, but he’s got his orders. His orders are explicitly not to fight, because Regis… is Regis, and Cor loves him dearly and will instead obey to the letter because that’s what friends do. He thinks.

He can’t even tell them to stop, either. They’re not themselves. It’s not Axis being a terribly irritating little shit like usual. It’s just… the coeurl. Cor doesn’t even bring it up because what’s the point of telling them about things they can’t control? He can deal with it. Mostly.

He does wish he had hands, to face palm properly, the day they drag a mangled, still wildly shooting  _ **Patria**_ and dump it in front of him, in a surprising display of cooperation that Cor would be a lot more impressed about it if it wasn’t for the _still shooting_ part.

“Axis,” Cor says, on the drive back home.

“Mmm?” Axis looks up from where he’s sprawled in Pelna’s lap, trying to nap.

“You’re an  _asshole_ ,” Cor tells him, with feeling.

…the absolute bastard has the nerve to laugh.


	33. what do normal coeurls think of galahdian berserker-shifters?

Cor is hit by the sudden, overwhelming relief that he’s not expected to actually write reports for his actual missions. Because it means he doesn’t have to explain why he’s chasing after a pack of coeurls… actual coeurls, not his usual coeurls, and the fact he can say he has a usual pack of coeurls to deal with is something he never really thought was going to be a thing until very recently.

But yes, not writing reports, and most definitely not having to tell anyone, ever, that he had to watch Crowe hit on an elder coeurl and start off a somewhat murderously playful chase that completely derailed them from their actual objective, and honestly, Cor is keenly starting to see the whole thing about getting drunk and why people would purposely poison themselves if it means they have to stop  _thinking_.

Cor drops to the ground when they finally get tired of chasing each other and start just sharing sparkly greetings, whiskers touching and leaving bright, crisp scorch marks on the ground around them, even though they seem to be perfectly fine. No one will ever know. No one will ever  _know_. Cor gives in to dejected urge and places his paws over his snout, but it doesn’t really feel as good as a face palm would.

He’s jostled from contemplating the fact he’s actually found a thing his human form can do much better than his wolf form - namely, express despairing displeasure - by the sudden, awkward realization that he’s getting groomed for his trouble.

Groomed.

Actually, Cor thinks a little snidely, he’d love to write a report on how poorly this particular outing has gone, if nothing else because then he could get to watch Drautos’ face when he read it.

It takes him entirely too long to realize he’s getting groomed by a coeurl that’s not one of  _his_ coeurls. That’s about when he’s willing to admit he’s utterly lost control of his life.


	34. Pelna confronting Regis about Cor

“I don’t understand it,” Pelna says, coming to stand by the King’s left, which he probably shouldn’t because it’s not polite, but then they’ve managed to convince the court to let them do almost anything they want at this point. “Why you’d tell him not to fight, but still send him out anyway. Your Majesty.”

The King is silent for a long moment, watching the various clusters of lords and ladies waltz around the room, conversations carried in snippy, stealthy whispers.

“You’re worried about him,” he says after a moment, expression wry.

“You’ve sent him to war and told him not to defend himself,” Pelna points out, though not unkindly - that is Pelna’s greatest talent, to deliver truth without barbs and make others all the more willing to listen because of it. “Should we not be worried?”

“Cor learned to fight under the previous King’s rule,” the King says quietly, “he doesn’t know how to fight without giving into slaughter.” He paused, giving Pelna a very significant look. “He’s not… made for slaughter, despite how much he’s been told so, all his life.”

“No,” Pelna snorts, thinking of Cor sprawled on the ludicrously big couch in the shared suite, winding up Axis with tiny little barbs that are too soft to insult but too poignant to ignore. “He’s not.”

And now the King is staring at him, frowning slightly, seemingly caught off guard. Pelna smiles wryly and shrugs.

“No, he’s not,” the King insists, as if he’s never encountered someone who agreed with him on that point, which is an entirely different can of worms Pelna will have to sit down and ponder about, later. “He doesn’t need to fight, as is. None of you do. This is not a war to be won in battlefields. This will be a war won with words and old favors repaid.”

“Minimize the casualties and let things run their course, is it?”

The King smiles.

“Something like that.”


	35. Drautos, Cor, Tea.

Cor is staring at him. Titus is tired and cranky and all he wants right now is his tea and his crossword puzzle, and then maybe not feel like a miserable fucking wreck for five minutes, despite the fact the world is literally going crazy.

“You’re not going to  _drink_ that,” Cor says, in the uncertain tones that make it not quite a question, not quite a horrified revelation.

Titus looks down his nose at him.

“Yes,” he says, with patience and civility he didn’t even know he had, “matter of fact, I am.”

Cor looks like Titus just told him he kicks puppies and eats kittens, or something equally horrific.

“But it’s ruined,” Cor says, like it is some great sin. “That’s just leaves in boiled water.”

Titus stares down him harder, for all the good it ever does.

“Yes,” he says, and wonders when today will end, “that’s what tea is, Marshal.”

Cor rolls his eyes at him. Cor rolls his eyes. At him! If Titus weren’t in the process of falling to pieces, he’d be offended about it. As it is, he makes an indignant sound when Cor snatches the cup from his hand and unceremoniously dumps it out the window. They’re some thirty floors off the ground. Titus hopes the tea is cold by the time it hits the ground, but since no one screams at being hit with boiling tea, Titus imagines it’s alright.

Well, no, because Cor has just defenestrated his tea, and honestly, if Titus were a lesser man, that’d be grounds enough for him to cry.

Fifteen minutes later - fifteen very long, very trying minutes later, after Cor took over the small electric kettle Titus keeps tucked in a corner of his office because he basically lives here at this point - Cor serves him a cup  and folds his arms over his chest expectantly.

Titus drinks it, even though deep down he expects it to be poisoned. He wouldn’t mind being poisoned, at this point.

“ _That_ ,” Cor says, nodding self-righteously as Titus stares down at his cup, “is tea.  _Actual_ tea.”

Titus doesn’t cry, but only just.


	36. The Galahdians have staked their claim on Cor

Clarus walks into Regis’ office and takes his seat in the comfy chair off the side by the window, rather than the formal, stiff ones in front of Regis’ desk. Because Clarus is the Shield and at this point, the only bright side of that title is the seating arrangements and sometimes - only sometimes - the parking spot.

“I had the most peculiar conversation today,” Clarus says, about half an hour later, once Regis has finished crawling his way through the pile of dossiers and snapshots scattered before him.

“Do tell,” Regis replies, resting an elbow on the desk and bracing himself forward to rest his chin on it, with the careless, irresponsible air of a sixteen year old who absolutely did not want to do his homework and would take any excuse not to do it. “The most exciting thing that happened to me today was finding a spider in a corner of the western sitting room and debating whether pointing it out or keeping the secret would be more entertaining in the long run.”

This is usually the point where Clarus would normally ask Regis, in a very deadpan voice, if the war is boring him and whether they should schedule something suitably exciting to kill the tedium of a ludicrous war they absolutely cannot afford to fight and oh, they’re mostly losing on the military side, for all Regis is doing… magic, really, on the diplomatic side.

Instead, Clarus says:

“I spoke with Lady Altius today.”

Regis frowns.

“Altius?” He doesn’t seem to recognize the name.

To be fair to him, he does known all seven hundred and three separate families that belong in the various echelons of the court, as well as the rather byzantine relationship between all of them, and rather well enough to keep them all happy enough no one has outright tried to kill Regis in  _years_  now. But Clarus is not having a good day and he doesn’t fancy being fair.

“Crowe Altius, our esteemed Galahdian Lady,” Clarus clarifies, one eyebrow arched.

Regis snorts.

“She’s not a lady,” he points out, “and she will punch you if you call her that.”

“Kicked me, actually,” Clarus says, snorting, “in the shins.” He politely ignores the bark of awkward laughter choking Regis at the idea. “Before she told me to stuff my plans somewhere unmentionable, because Cor’s taking them all out to Lestallum this weekend.”

“Your plans involved Cor?” Regis asks, warily, because Regis is a softhearted idiot who keeps indulging the worst of Cor’s temper tantrum and that ridiculous notion of his of not being a perfectly normal human being.

“Gladio’s birthday is on Sunday,” Clarus explains, shaking his head with a sigh. “He’d be… glad to see his godfather.” There’s a pause, sharp and slightly hurt. “It’s been a year now.”

“He still doesn’t know what a godfather is supposed to do,” Regis points out, placating, always trying to wave off Clarus’ concern, to tell him it’s nothing. “You might not have done the best job explaining it.”

What’s there to explain about not being a fucking dog? Clarus thinks unkindly, before he sighs again.

“They’ve grown rather fond of him, haven’t they,” he says instead, which is a lot less snide. “You’d think they’re not Galahdian at all.”

Because Clarus remembers Galahd. Actual Galahd, that is, the godforsaken - except the exact opposite in fact - swampy, wet, forever-raining, miserable cluster of land fueled, in Clarus’ humble opinion, on sheer fucking  _spite_. He remembers the people, closed-off and defensive and prone to going to glaring and going stone quiet rather than return a heartfelt hello.

Clarus did not enjoy their stay in Galahd. Because Clarus isn’t Regis, for whom Galahd begins and ends with Aulea, and frankly?  _Frankly_? Clarus loves him, he does, his brother and his king, always and forever, but he still had his objections about involving Galahd in their war. Very loud ones.

“Galahd and its people are a lot more personable than you give them credit for, my friend,” Regis says, snorting. “I’ve always thought it’s the kind of place Cor would have enjoyed visiting or even living in, to be honest.”

“Because Cor needs to be more of a reckless, ill-tempered, bratty  _beast_ ,” Clarus deadpans, looking unamused.

“Maybe he does,” Regis muses, a little sharply, just enough Clarus knows this is not a conversation worth pursuing with the king. “He’s rather upbeat these days.”

Clarus snorts.

“That’s one way of putting it, I suppose.”


	37. Some backstory on the Pelna/Axis

Pelna loves his wife. He loves her enough for her to  _be_ his wife. He marries her the day after he turns eighteen, and the entire neighborhood is a wall of offended outrage because of it. But he loves his wife, so he doesn’t care. He sits on the floor, back relaxed as he spins, and she sits with her back against his, fingers tending the loom, and they’re happy that way.

He loves his wife in the mornings and he loves his wife in the nights, in the sunlight and in the rainstorms, as days melt into weeks, which pile up easily into months, and he thinks to himself, his love is like a bottomless spring, that it will last forever.

Pelna loves his wife, holds her hand when they set out on their first Walk as husband and wife, and smiles at her when the sky roars endless and furious above their heads. He loves his wife even when lightning doesn’t spare her, doesn’t arc away at the last moment, and instead strikes true, wrapping itself into her, leaving the sign of Ramuh’s favor scrawled on her skin.

Pelna loves his wife, even though she has died, chosen instead to be reborn as one of the linchpins of Galahd’s ageless covenant with their God. She is not his wife anymore, eyes flecked with purple, scars stretching across her face and down her neck, past the swell of her breasts and over her hips, curled up tight around her legs and only stopping at the sole of her feet. She is Galahd itself, the promise of the storm, and in exchange of her life as Pelna’s wife, she will be granted secrets as old as Galahd itself.

Pelna loves her still, even though he shouldn’t. Even though she’s dead. He loves her so he serves her, instead, and volunteers to take the rite in her first ceremony. The rite kills more than it blesses, but that is just how it always is, in Galahd. So he drinks her blood and bends his neck, and when the coeurl comes, he wills his love for her to show him the way back. If he dies, he’ll wait for her, in the beyond. If he lives, he’ll be Ramuh’s Wrath as much as she’s His Wisdom.

Pelna loves his wife, died for his wife, learned rage and violence so antithetical to his being for his wife, but she’s still dead and wise and untouchable, and his existence orbiting around her is tenuously miserable in the sweetest way, because he’s the one who chose it. They no longer sit in silence, weaving beautiful things with their fingers. They no longer share the easy silence of those who share every thought. They’re not strangers, no, but that somehow is worse.

Pelna loves his wife, the idea of her, the shape of her memory, and he’s resigned to exist that way, forever, when Axis comes and demands to partake the rite.

Axis demands the rite like some do, out of aimless, powerless rage, nursing a loss too great for words. He comes for the promise of near certain death, rather than power, and as he accompanies him during his preparations, Pelna finds himself thinking kindly of the man, perhaps precisely because he knows how much he’d loathe to know it.

Axis holds the bowl full of blood and secrets and drinks it while staring straight at Pelna’s dead wife’s eyes.

When he turns back, alive and whole and blessed despite the odds, he falls to his knees, weeping like a child. Pelna doesn’t know what possesses him to do it, why he’s so kindred to a man so objectively contrary and vicious, but he reaches out, even though he shouldn’t, and wraps his arms around him, whispering soothing words into his ear. He’s not even surprised when he bites him, teeth sinking into his shoulder through the layers of his clothes until they break skin. Axis sobs with a mouthful of Pelna’s blood staining his lips, and Pelna combs his hair and smiles wryly at the sad, not-so-wise look on his wife’s dead face.

Pelna loves his wife. He truly does. He still says yes when Axis asks him into his bed, and he doesn’t mind the sweat or the marks or the scrubbed off tears.

“You should go,” Pelna’s dead wife tells him one day, with her dead mouth tilted into a ghost of the smiles he loves, her dead eyes glinting almost like they used to. “To Insomnia.” Her smile widens, twists, twitches. “Answer our King’s call for aid.”

Pelna has the imprint of Axis’ teeth on his collarbones and the taste of his skin stuck behind his teeth. He loves his wife and he hates himself and he knows an order when he hears it.

“Of course, my Lady.”

He manages, despite himself, to not look back, next morning as they head out the pier, out into the sea, first to Anemoi, then to the mainland and the unknown.

“You reckon we’ll get to  _eat_ anyone?” Axis asks him, head hooked on his shoulder, one hand loosely holding Pelna’s even though he made disgusted noises and grumped about ridiculous sentimentality.

Pelna doesn’t love Axis. Not really. Not like he loved his wife, with all the soft, kind edges of his being.

“I mean sure,” he snorts, burying his laughter into the crown of messy hair, “why not.”

But, and here’s the strangest thing of it all, he’s fairly sure he could.


	38. Nyx calling Clarus out

“Why do you hate him so much?”

Clarus startles at the question, internal debate whether he should go and make sure Cor is not indulging on the Prince’s less than Princely antics or not, derailed into silence at the sound of a quiet, near resigned voice.

“Excuse me?” He asked, and turned around to the source of that voice.

He found Nyx Ulric standing behind him, hands stuck inside the back pockets of his pants, back slouched forward messily, ridiculous scarf-cape-thing around his neck, and expression a delicate mixture between annoyed, resigned, furious and tired.

Mostly tired.

“Cor,” Nyx says, staring up at him with a squint, “what did he even do to you, that you hate him so much?”

Clarus blinked.

“He is one of my oldest friends,” he says, clearly at loss to how to respond to such a bizarre inquiry. “Of course I don’t  _hate_ him.”

Nyx let out a breath that would have been a sigh if not for the back he bared his teeth.

“Then may I suggest you fucking  _act_ like it?”

Clarus splutters, face purpling with outrage, but before he can tell Nyx exactly what he thinks about such a rude demand, the Prince comes by, seeking moral support from Nyx.

“He’s fucking with me,” Noctis whines, wrinkling his nose and pointing an accusing finger at Cor. “Nyx, tell me he’s fucking with me.”

“I mean, we both know he’s not, because he doesn’t have the required spine to fuck with someone like that,” Nyx replies, laughing easily and brightly, and Clarus needs to swallow back his annoyance and watch him ruffle Noctis’ hair affectionately, just as Cor comes by to stand beside him, expression wry, “but if it’ll make you feel any better, Little Swallow, then sure. He’s totally fucking with you.” There’s a pause. “What about, though?”

Clarus doesn’t miss the way Cor’s hand finds one of Nyx’s, or the way he looks at Regis’ son the same way he looks at Clarus’, like he adores them and he doesn’t know what to do with those feelings except maybe roll over and become a rug they all walk over.

“He said it snows here, for like,  _months_ ,” Noctis looks supremely put out by the idea that Insomnia would have a climate unlike what he’s used to.

Nyx laughs again, that suddenly grating sound that echoes like a taunt against Clarus’ ears.

“Oh, that, yeah, no. He’s totally not fucking with you, this city has the  _worst climate_? Can you believe it only rains for like a whole  _month_?  _The whole year_?”

The young Prince looks like he’s sucked on something sour and Clarus watches as Cor gives him a borderline apologetic look, as if he were responsible for the weather somehow, or that he’d change it if he could. Noctis sighs dramatically, head hanging slightly.

“…well that fucking sucks,” he says, and then turns around to stare up at Clarus, blue eyes sly and curious. “What about you? What do you like best about Insomnia?” Noctis asks him, blunt and casual and utterly unruffled by anything at all. “And please don’t say the weather.”

Despite himself, Clarus snorts at that, shaking his head.

“The people,” he says, but he’s looking at Nyx instead, a little challenging himself. “One day, I hope you understand that a city is not the roads, the climate, the buildings, or any of the other million things that could go wrong and you’ll invariably be blamed for. Insomnia is its people, and I also hope one day you’ll find yourself thinking fondly of them, as well.”


	39. Monica trying to deal with Cor

“But what do you  _do_?” The blonde asked him, eyes narrowed and expression frustrated.

Cor shrugged eloquently.

“Mostly nothing,” he replied. “Unless there’s a war or Regis is bored, I guess.”

“But you’re the  _Marshal_ ,” she insisted, looking supremely put out.

“On a technicality and a tantrum from the King,” he pointed out, and then shrugged. “Everyone knows the title is pure courtesy at this point.”  His lips twitched. “You’re still top dog of the Crownsguard, Miss Elshett, regardless of rank.”

“But you still  _outrank_ me,” she said, rather put out by the idea. She wrinkled her nose at him. “Do you even have any useful skills?”

Cor blinked and shrugged.

“I’m good with animals and I make great tea,” he explained, lips twitching again at an inside joke he didn’t particularly feel like sharing.

She stared.

He smiled placidly right back.

“Well, this is fantastic,” she sighed, “my superior officer is a glorified  _paperweight_.”

He had the nerve to laugh.


	40. coeurl!Nyx demanding petting from Cor

“He’s not changing back,” Cor pointed out, not looking at her in the eye, because one did not look at a Witch in the eye, ever, it was rude and uncalled for.

Also because he was naked under the rough square of weaved fabric and he was never self-conscious about his body until he was under her judging stare, and then he found himself lacking in pretty much everything it was possible to be.

“He’s also not dying,” Kimya pointed out tartly, snorting when he shuffled nervously in place. “You didn’t tell me he was cursed, like you.”

Cor remembered the lash of magic closing in above his head, drowning him in the vicious disdain powering it as it tore him apart and reshuffled him into a different shape. He remembered Nyx and Libertus and Axis and Pelna and Crowe, trying to explain without telling him anything they couldn’t, how different things were in Galahd.

“He’s not,” Cor said, watching Nyx stretch lazily under the shadow of an ancient tree, fur crisp and stark white against the million shades of green crawling all over the thicket.

“He’s twenty four hundred pounds of fur, magic and death,” Kimya deadpanned, and Cor risked a look up her face and immediately looked away when he found her staring incredulously down at him. “Is that supposed to be normal?”

“He’s from Galahd,” Cor replied, and Nyx’s ears twitched at the sound of his voice, whiskers wiggling as he turned to look at Cor in the eye and slowly began to walk over with slow, thunderous steps. Cor swallowed hard, no longer afraid to let the massive head rub itself against his chest, fingers instinctively finding their place deep into the thick fur. “He’s… he’s blessed, instead.”

Kimya snorted as the massive creature flopped down on Cor’s lap and spilled out onto the ground, loud, rumbling purring echoing out of those powerful lungs.

“Blessings are just curses looked at with hope, instead of despair,” she said, like Cor would know what that meant, what any of it meant. She sighed loudly at him, “give it time.”

Cor chased after the spots that made Nyx purr the loudest, and figured that was all he could do.


	41. Noctis meets wolf!Cor

Noctis knows he’s not supposed to be here, but he’s also sick and tired of the never ending list of things he’s not supposed to do or say or feel, and frankly at this point this feels like the better option, sneak away and find somewhere quiet to sort through his thoughts than sticking around and eventually tell his… father and his entire dumb court what he really thought of them.

Besides, there’s nothing out here, in Insomnia, in that little fenced off forest they keep around almost for show, that Noctis can’t handle.

He’s pretty sure, at least.

Mostly.

He’s not looking where he’s going, is the thing, not really. He’s running around the trees - and on the trees, in places, the few ones that look solid enough - and then he lands himself on a large black shape by the lake, which he originally thought was a rock. Except it’s not, because that’s fur under his hands, and the steady movement of a slow breathing and then the thing is moving under him and Noctis barely scrambles to roll away and leap into solid ground when the shape unfurls into… into…

“Well, shit,” Noctis whispers, staring at the massive wolf and wondering if this is how he’s going to die.


	42. Cor fursploding in the Citadel

“This is a terrible idea,” Cor says, staring down the Prince with a dubious frown.

Noctis shrugs up at him.

“I mean, yes, obviously,” he snorts, “but that’s kind of the point of a prank, Cor. It’s something you’re absolutely, 100% not supposed to do, and then you do it anyway, because it’ll be funny.”

“There’s… history attached to it, though,” Cor mutters, but doesn’t outright defy him, because he’s found himself utterly incapable of denying Noctis anything he damn well wants. “From… your grandfather’s time.”

“I know, Clarus told me. And then my  _father_  told me.” Noctis wrinkles his nose. “Look my grandfather was an asshole, and everybody knew that. Do we really need to spend the rest of our lives trying to politely sidestep that fact? That’s dumb.”

Cor doesn’t have a suitable answer to that.

“Besides,” Noctis goes on, “Gladio wants to be my Shield, right? We might as well give him something to shield against! Test his mettle if you will.”

“He’s not Galahdian, though,” Cor points out, one last token bit of resistance, and line drawn in the sand, “I’m not going to hurt him.”

“Of course not,” Noctis snickers and reaches a hand to poke Cor’s chest. “We both know you’re not going to hurt anyone. That’s the joke, Cor. They don’t know that. That’s what makes it funny. Because it’s a prank.”

Cor looks unconvinced, but nods anyway.

On the upside, nobody is hurt.

On the downside, the look on Clarus’ face is enough to make Cor consider moving to an entirely different continent to avoid having a follow up conversation.


	43. Nyx finds out something he wishes he didn't know about Cor; hatred of Mors ensues.

Nyx takes a deep breath, then another, and brushes his fingers against Cor’s back, studying the scars that look like rope-burn, jagged and distorted, because the body they had been made on  was much, much smaller than the one they’re displayed on right now.

“…what’s a mindflayer and why did you end up fighting it?” He asks, because he couldn’t not ask, ever, even if he knows it never goes well.

“Daemon,” Cor says shortly, quietly, and doesn’t elaborate further than that. He doesn’t have to, really. Daemons are gone but the stories remain. Nyx has heard enough of them. “I was buying time,” Cor adds instead, and offers a small, amused laugh that settles like lead in the pit of Nyx’s gut. “I don’t… I don’t think the King expected me to survive that one.”

“He left you behind,” Nyx surmises, licking his lips. “He left you behind and you were… what? Sixteen?”

“Fourteen,” Cor replies, like it makes it any better. “It was my first… my first actual job, as part of his retinue. I don’t think he expected me to survive it, but I did. He assigned me to guard Regis, after that.”

Mors is dead, Nyx reminds himself. He’s dead and reviled and no one will fucking cry over his loss, because he didn’t get anything he didn’t thoroughly deserve.

Mors is dead. Cor isn’t.

Nyx buries his face into the back of Cor’s neck and breaths in the scent of him, to try and keep his mind from giving into rage. It’s getting harder each day, the more he gets to know the idiot, the more he shares without really realizing what it means.

Mors is dead.

Nyx is almost sorry that’s the case, sometimes.


	44. Cor realizes he loves Nyx. Kinda.

He wakes up sore and content in Nyx’s bed, as it’s often the case, with the shape of fingers bruised along the inside of his thighs and the itch of bitemarks along his neck. He leans in further, nose pressed against the dip between Nyx’s collarbones, and he takes a deep breath, soaking in the smell. It’s weirdly soothing, just like everything else about Nyx is. He doesn’t remember cleaning up, or shuffling under the covers, but he’s used to it, by now.

What he’s not used to, it’s the itch. That traitorous urge curled up somewhere in his gut. He’s never thought about it - he has, he has been thinking about it since the very first time, he’s just not let himself think about it, because Nyx smiled, that first time, and kept his hands to himself. And Cor gets it’s rude, it’s very crass, to ask for anything. One can offer, freely, but never ask. And Cor’s offered Nyx, the same way he’s offered everyone else, but Nyx only smiles, every time.

He wants to ask.

He’s not supposed to, but he  _wants_ to. He wants his hands on him, his mouth, but more than that… he wants permission to touch back. To touch at all, if it comes to that.

“Cor?” Nyx asks, staring blearily up at him, eyes glassed with sleep.

Cor stares down at him, sprawled on the bed without a care in the world, vulnerable like that. He swallows hard. This could end very, very poorly at that, but he wants to. He leans in and presses his lips to Nyx’s, slow and careful, ready to flee at the smallest twitch. But when he does pull back - even now, he knows, one offers, never asks - there’s a hand wound up in his hair, keeping him close if not right there.

“What’s that for?” Nyx asks, voice low and pleased, almost like a purr, and every inch of Cor’s skin curls up in goosebumps.

Cor wishes he knew how to explain, but he doesn’t… so he doesn’t.


	45. Blushing Promnis

“I want to touch you,” Prompto says quietly, standing by the doorway, towel in his hands. “I… feel you wouldn’t want that. I don’t mean to take advantage.”

Ignis, soaked through and dripping a puddle into the carpet, stares down at him, glasses held loosely in one hand.

“It’s… it wouldn’t be,” he whispered, swallowing hard as Prompto approached him, slowly, tentatively, towel raised up almost like a shield. “I’m sorry, I’ve been rather rude.”

Prompto offered a very small, very wry smile, and raised on his tiptoes to wrap the towel around his shoulders.

“Would you think less of me, if I admitted I found it rather endearing?”

Ignis stared down at him, water dripping down his bangs, green eyes bright and gorgeous, and said:

“I don’t think I could ever think less of you anymore.”

Then he blinked. Prompto blinked back, lower lip caught between his teeth, unsure.

“…is that a good thing, or a bad thing?” He asked, not quite convinced he shouldn’t just let go of the towel, turn around and never look back.

“I haven’t the foggiest,” Ignis whispered helplessly, a splash of red across his nose and all the way up his ears.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” Prompto informed him, licking his lips, “because I lied, and I think I might take advantage after all.”

Ignis response was to kiss him first.

Prompto did not complain.


	46. Promnis, weather disturbance

“When the Princess was young,” Prompto explained, steadily stirring the mixture in the pot, “she would get sick a lot. After… after the War, the Glacian collapsed on the outskirts of Tenebrae, her body oozes cold, everywhere, so it’s almost always snowing, all year round. This helped, so even though she’s stronger now, healthier, I learned to make it for her. It… brings her good memories.”

Ignis nodded, and stopped the quiet notes he was taking.

“Should I not…?”

Prompto chuckled, shaking his head.

“It’s quite alright,” he said, “it’s a bit of a folk recipe, so it’s not exactly a state secret.” He looked down at it, face heating up slightly. “I just… meant to do something to repay your kindness, and when the snow shower seemed to catch you all by surprise… it seemed appropriate.”

“Thank you, Prompto,” Ignis said quietly, nodding. “You must miss Tenebrae terribly.”

“I do,” Prompto admitted, and reached out to sprinkle nutmeg into the mix. “We all do, really.” He blinked. “We absolutely nonetheless appreciate His Majesty’s kindness in taking the Prince and the Princess in, of course. It’s just… hard, to leave home behind, even with good reason.”

He deemed the mixture ready, because he scooped up two mugs of it and offered one to Ignis with a small, uncertain smile. Ignis never failed to be fascinated by the tiny glimpses of Prompto’s actual personality that  were sometimes visible through the cracks in the facade of the perfectly devoted and endlessly competent servant. He treasured every single one of them, even though he knew he shouldn’t.

“Thank you,” he said, again, purely for the pleasure of watching Prompto’s freckles bloom beneath his blush.


	47. Regis, Clarus, reactions to "Fursploded"

“It’s not funny,” Cor muttered sullenly, sitting cross-legged on the grass, while Regis and Clarus sat on the steps of the cabin.

Regis replied by cackling some more, face buried in his hands, and Cor huffed slightly, before turning to Clarus for support. Clarus usually supported not laughing about matters that involved Cor’s curse, and sure enough, he was sitting there stone-faced and solemn, holding his beer by the neck of the bottle.

Then he snorted, facade cracking right in the middle.

“…it’s a  _little_ funny,” he whispered, smile wry and eyes bright. “And very… descriptive.”

“ _Fursploded_ ,” Cor insisted with a hiss.

Regis paused his desperate laughter only to gasp and lean against his Shield’s shoulder, before he resumed again.

Cor hoped he got the hiccups for his trouble.

Asshole.


	48. Cor and those orgies

“Aww, poor Puppy,” Crowe said, chin resting on Cor’s head and arms draped down his chest, nails picking at the constellation of scars on his skin. “Had a rough day?”

“Ask Axis,” Cor muttered dryly, and then shifted his knee, bouncing Axis’ head off his thigh tauntingly.

“Suck my dick,  _Puppy_ ,” Axis snickered, tilting his head to bury his nose in the dip of Cor’s hipbones, expression insufferably smug.

“One of these days, he’s going to bite you,” Pelna pointed out, curled on Axis’ back, eyes dancing as he trailed his hand between his legs. Axis groaned as Cor bared his teeth, clearly not opposed to the idea. “And then where will you be?”

“Don’t answer that,” Libertus snorted, passing a beer to Crowe and sliding up against Cor’s side. “How did you not murder anybody?”

“Would have, gladly,” Cor deadpaned back, and then took advantage of Crowe’s distracting to tilt his head back and sideways and sank his teeth into the swell of a breast. “But I couldn’t fit it in the schedule, had a knitting club meeting.”


	49. The Knitting Club

“But  _why_ are we doing this?” Cor asked, frowning at the terrible, terrible mess of yarn he’s made and not entirely sure he was in the mood to bother and try to salvage it.

“For the same reason we do basically anything, Puppy,” Crowe pointed out, a similar mess in her hands, “because it’ll be funny.”

“For some definitions of funny,” Libertus grumped, holding a needle between his teeth and fumbling with the quickly unraveling ghost of what might have once been meant to be a sock.

“I’m with the Mutt on this one,” Axis snorted, throwing down the needles in disgust, “how’s this funny at all?”

“Look, General Drautos is an ass, right?” Pelna pointed out, fingers quickly and efficiently working their way into turning his ball of yarn into something that looked very much sock-like. So far he was the only one, really. “He’s been hounding us, pun wholly intended, and then Cor told him about the knitting and he didn’t believe him.”

“I think if I told Drautos the sky is blue, he’d still go out and look for himself,” Cor pointed out, shaking his head.

“Exactly,” Pelna agreed, “so imagine the look on his face when you go over there and give him a pair of socks. Or three pair of socks, with all our good wishes to go with them.”

“I think what they’re asking is why are  _we_ knitting them,” Nyx pointed out, shaking his head, he had a tube of yarn full of holes, but it was better than Cor trying to untangle a knot with his teeth and Libertus giving up pretenses and hacking tangles off with scissors. “Why don’t  _you_ knit them? You’re the one who knows how.”

“Because watching you fail at this is fun for me,” Pelna pointed out unrepentantly, “and honestly, the worst they are, the funnier the look on his face will be.”


	50. Coeurl grooming human!Cor

“He’s still not turning back,” Cor pointed out unnecessarily, in lieu of an actual greeting.

“Magic was already complicated, before your bloody King went and made a worse mess of it,” Kimya retorted dryly, eyebrows arched as she went to the well to get some water.

Cor would be a lot more patient to wait out the results of her meddling and Nyx’s - hopefully short - recovery, if he could wait it out as a wolf. But she’d forbidden him to change, and now he had nothing else to do but sit outside the shack and endure the rough, barbed tongue trying to comb his hair.

“At this point I just want you to turn back,” Cor told the insufferable ball of fur and death, glaring darkly, “just so I can strangle you properly.”

Nyx continued to purr and do his best to groom him.


	51. Cor, Hunter Urban Legend

Dave swears by anything holy, that he’s seen the Hound roaming in Cleigne, south of Ravatogh.

The way he tells it, he was looking for some tags and ran too close to an imperial base, or what remained of it. The war’s been harsh on everyone, out in the borders of the kingdom, with the sudden swarm of troops clashing against the Crownsguard all over the place, and entire bases raised in as little as two weeks. There are whispers though. Entire bases demolished in a single night, torn asunder as if by daemons.

Daemons are gone though, all that remains are monsters and terrors that bleed just like everyone else.

Dave claims, swears, drinks to the fact he stumbled upon the clearing following a trail of tracks, and instead found a monstrous wolf the size of a small hill lying on its side as a pack of creatures he’d never seen the like before but seemed couerls of some kind rained lightning all over the place.

Dave’s Head Hunter, most take him at his word, no matter what he says.

But when he talks about the Hound - everyone knows the stories from the fall of the previous King and his pet daemon, who vanished with the death of its master, never to be seen again - when he tells them the beast stood up and bared its teeth at him, and then let him go when he turned tail and ran… It’s hard to believe.

Still, they’ve all seen the tracks. Or pictures of them. Most famous picture is Minnie Stevens sitting cross-legged in the dip of a paw print, expression a hilarious mixture of disbelief and delight.

Dave swears by his story. He’s the Head Hunter. They almost believe him.

But not really.


	52. That time Pelna Lost. His. Shit.

“Don’t do this to me,” Cor pleaded quietly, face buried against the soft fur, fingers trying their best to find purchase on the thick coat. “Pelna. Pelna, stop.”

Pelna snarled, fangs brushing against his chest, and Cor forced himself to ignore it, the very real threat behind the gesture, as he closed his eyes and willed his frail, tiny human limbs to be enough of a restraint.

“He’s not gonna, you know,” Axis whispered, sitting with his back against the closed doors, one leg stretched forward and the other bent so he could fold an arm on his knee. “They insulted his Lady, it’s his job to pay them for the insolence. Our job, really.” He laughed, dark and vicious, and tilted his head back against the solid oak doors. “But even if it wasn’t his job, his god given duty… she was his wife, you know. It’s personal to him.”

“You’re not helping,” Cor pointed out with a growl, risking to look at him over his shoulder, and made himself not flinch when the tip of Pelna’s whiskers glowed with the promise of death.

“Course I ain’t,” Axis replied, eyebrows arched and expression mean like a kick to the teeth. “‘s my Lady too.”


	53. Titus Drautos, and the pack's attempts to make peace with him

“You look very tired, General,” Pelna said, as the self-appointed envoy to bite the bullet and maybe try to do some damage control with the increasingly pointed questions Drautos had been throwing their way lately. “Did you just get home last night?”

It  _had_ to be Pelna, though. Crowe didn’t like him, Libertus couldn’t hope to be polite, Nyx kept wanting to laugh whenever he saw him, and Axis…

No one deserved to be put on the spot with Axis on their case.

So Pelna it was. With his unassuming smile and his even temper and the fact he could somehow manage not to laugh in Drautos’ face when he squinted down at him like he was made of explosives and possibly death.

Technically, he was. But Drautos hadn’t done anything to earn his ire, and Pelna made a point to not disembowel anyone who didn’t deserve it. Someone had to cosmically balance out the shit Axis got up to, after all.

“I might have,” Drautos answered, looking stern and unapproachable. “Though I heard you were away for a while, as well.”

“Lestallum, yes,” Pelna replied, smiling placidly. “The Marshal was kind enough to take us for a tour of the power plant. Rather fascinating what you’ve done, with the heat of the meteor. There’s nothing quite like that, back home.”

“You keep saying that,” Drautos says after a moment, looking put out, “what Galahd is not, but I notice you’ve yet to share what it  _is_.”

“Lovely,” Pelna said, grinning wryly, “also feral and deadly.” There was a pause. “You probably wouldn’t like it.”

Drautos gave him a ridiculously irritated look.

“Yes, I suppose I wouldn’t.”


	54. Cor takes on Totomostro...

“I’m going to kill him,” Regis said, leaning on the railing as, in the arena, a suspiciously familiar black wolf tore through the opposition with frightening ease.

“I mean yes,” Weskham said, one eyeberow arched, “but preferably after the betting is over.”

“He’s going to die,” Clarus whispered, with that panicky, high pitched tone his voice took whenever Cor did something stupid and Clarus decided to feel personally responsible for the terrible outcome that invariably followed.

“Worse,” Cid snorted, hiding his face with his hat, “he’s gonna  _win_.”

By the time Cor was prodded back into a cage and shuffled out of sight entirely, Regis had nearly bankrupted the house and he was catching very dubious eyes from the various guards stationed around the stands. After all, betting everything every single time, and winning every single time, was the kind of miraculous luck that the owners of the Totomostro didn’t believe in.

And still, escaping them, with their newfound fortune, was ten million times easier than rescuing the fucking stupid idiot wolf kept imprisoned somewhere in the maze of basements beneath the arena.

“What?” Cor said, once they were safe, as he slid a pair of pants while hiding behind a topiary. “It worked, didn’t it?”

Regis stared at him and then turned very slowly and buried the shriek into Clarus’ chest. Clarus remained stoically staring straight ahead, while Weskham and Cid laughed at the vaguely constipated look on Cor’s face.


	55. that one time cor saved titus' life

“Now if you excuse me,” Titus begins, tired and exasperated, ready to sweep out of the room and ignore the ridiculousness he’s been subject to, but before he can, Cor reaches a hand to grab his throat.

It’s not a gentle hold, but it’s also not an attack. Titus knows the difference, but he doesn’t like it anyway. He tries to pull away and finds the grip on his throat to be steel-like, so all he can do is stare when Cor leans in, presses his nose to his chest, and  _sniffs_.

“…did you just  _smell_ me?” Titus splutters, staring down at the smaller man with a disbelieving look on his face.

“Yes,” Cor replies, and does it  _again_.

“He does that sometimes,” Nyx Ulric points out, eyebrows arched and eyes dancing in amusement.

Titus is about to tell Cor exactly what he thinks of that, but there’s still the matter of the hand around his throat and the fact the King will forgive him many things, but not hurting one of his closest friends. Even if that friend is a fucking weirdo with boundary issues.

“You’re poisoned,” Cor tells him, looking up to stare at him in the eye. “Faintly, not too strong yet. But it’s there.”

“What,” Titus splutters, but sobers up when he realizes Nyx is no longer grinning.

“Cor?” He asks, stepping closer.

Cor lets go of Titus’ throat, dropping his hand and stepping back, and all of a sudden it’s like nothing ever happened at all, except:

“I know what it smells like,” Cor replies, staring blankly at Nyx, “Mors liked to use it, when using me would be too… overt.”

“I really don’t-” Titus begins, not sure he wants to know what the hell Cor is talking about - he does want to know, a little, there’s a twinge of curiosity, somewhere under his sternum, that he doesn’t know what to do with, when it comes to Cor - but Nyx is moving already, reaching a hand to hold his elbow.

“I think we best get you a doctor, General,” Nyx says, expression somber, and before Titus can react, Cor has reached out to grab his other arm.

“I’m fine,” he insists, even as he’s dragged towards the nearest lift.

He’s really not, it turns out. He’s really, really not. It takes them weeks to figure out what’s poisoning him, and when they do - his tea spoons, it turned out - the trail’s gone too cold to trace it back to someone.

Titus would like to believe it’s Cor’s doing: the poisoning and the saving from the poisoning both. But he’s not too sure, anymore.


	56. that one time Noct tried to run away

“This is so uncool,” Noctis said, arms folded over his chest as he stared moodily at his feet.

The sheer sulkiness behind the posture was amplified tenfold by the fact he was hanging off Cor’s hold on the thin fabric of his t-shirt, which was caught in a surprisingly delicate hold between teeth the size of his arm. His feet dangled some twenty feet off the ground, as he watched Cor cross the distance it’d taken him a good half night to cover, in little over half an hour.

“I didn’t even make it to Galdin,” Noctis added, and then grimaced when Cor snorted - a decidedly unpleasant experience from up close. “You suck.”

Cor snorted again, in reply, louder this time. It was still gross. Then Noctis yelped loudly when the fabric of his shirt finally gave up the ghost and tore, and he had half a second of incompresention - well, a very strangled squeak that might have been meant to be  _shit_  - before Cor dipped his head in and caught him with his snout. It wasn’t the most comfortable landing, but it sure beat the cold, rocky ground of Leide.

“I’m just saying,” Noctis said, sitting up and reaching with a foot to tap between Cor’s eyes, wondering absently if wolves could be cross-eyed, “neither of us would be in this situation if you’d just. Y’know. Let me- _fuck!_ ”

Cor didn’t let him finish the proposal, bouncing his snout back sharply and propeling the lanky teenager into the air, before he landed, quite awkwardly, onto the plush fur along his neck. He even gave him about half a minute to figure out what had happened, before he started running again. Already, Hammerhead was visible in the distance, which was great news for Cor, considering dawn wasn’t far off, and he wasn’t in the mood to be hunted down by eager, anxious hunters.

Besides, whatever he could say, to the young, runaway Prince, Cid could say better. Always.

“This sucks,” Noctis told no one in particular, and gave serious consideration to just sinking into Cor’s fur and refusing to ever crawl back out again.


	57. prompto and ignis, on the merits of being safe even if the circumstances are creepy

“Can’t sleep?” Prompto asks, walking over to Ignis and sitting next to him on the concrete steps leading up to the central quarters in the base.

“It’s… unfamiliar,” Ignis replies, as an explanation, arms wrapped around his ankles as he nods down to the neat lines of eerily quiet MT troopers completing mathematically precise rounds all along the premises. “I’m not the only one, I do believe Gladio is on his very last rope and might pick up a fight with something… someone before the night is out.”

Prompto winces.

“He’s the Prince’s Shield,” Prompto ventures, reaching down to sit next to Ignis, “and the Prince isn’t here. He’s… understandably upset.” He pauses. “And the creepy scenery is not helping, either, of course.”

“It’s not… entirely creepy,” Ignis mutters, even though he winces when a handful of troopers pass by the feet of the stairs, porcelain-like metal masks weirdly shiny under the blindingly bright search lights lazily tracing patterns around the open spaces of the base.

“It’s absolutely fucking creepy,” Prompto deadpans, and then chuckles. “It’s okay, it still makes my skin crawl and I fantasize about running away screaming three times a day. It’s cool.”

“It’s safe,” Ignis points out, lips curving into a wry smile, as always endlessly charmed by the little bursts of personality that Prompto allowed himself in his presence, “which is nothing to scoff at.”

“Safe and creepy and terrible to sleep in,” Prompto declares, and then sighs, letting his head drop forward. “C’mon, let’s go find Gladio and raid the kitchens.”

“Technically, it’s not a raid,” Ignis says, lips twitching when Prompto huffs and rolls his eyes dramatically at him. “Given the circumstances.”

“The circumstances can go eat an entire dick,” Prompto replies, and then nudges Ignis’ leg with his own. “C’mon, I’m trying to develop the habit of eating when I’m stressed.”

“…as opposed to?” Ignis muses, but follows obediently as Prompto starts down the bare steps in search of the unmistakable shape of Gladio amidst the sea of MT troopers slowly going about their business like the good clockwork soldiers they are.

“Crying, mostly,” Prompto deadpans, even though Ignis is not entirely sure he’s ever seen him cry. “Apparently it’s unseemly.”

“Apparently,” Ignis deadpans back, and then licks his lips when Prompto’s hand casually finds his own, fingers entwining without a second thought. “Prompto.”

“Stressed!” Prompto replies, and tugs him along a little closer.

Ignis does not miss the way glowing red facsimiles of eyes linger on him, after that, but at least no one tries to shoot him or forcefully remove him from the blond’s hold.

So hey.

Small victories.

…dawn still can’t come soon enough.


	58. prompto tries - keyword tries - to bake something for ignis

“Don’t eat that!” Prompto yelped, diving at Ignis when he reached to try one of the crispy on the side of burnt chunks of chocolate disasters on a tray.

Ignis’ reaction was to brace his feet for the inevitable collision, and raise his arms well above his head, and well out of reach from Prompto’s clawing hands.

“Why not?” Ignis asked, eyebrows arched teasingly as Prompto spluttered and flushed a lovely shade of magenta. “I was led to believe these were for me.”

“They are!” Prompto whined, and made one last ditch attempt to magically grow the handful of inches he needed to snatch the treats out of Ignis’ grasp. He deflated. “I mean, they were. They will be.”

“Temporally displaced brownies,” Ignis deadpanned, expression bland and eyes twinkling in delight. “My favorite.”

“See if I bake anything for you ever again,” Prompto groused, pouting mightily, even though Ignis was absolutely sure he would never own up to it, “in your… weird, non-imperial temperature,  _lame_ ovens.” There was a small pause. “There will have to be math involved!” A longer pause. “I… am actually really good at math, I have no excuse. I’m just. Not good at baking, I guess.”

Ignis smiled and ate the burnt, misshapen attempt at a brownie in one bite, despite the horrified look in Prompto’s face.

“The nuts are a nice touch.”

Prompto made a tiny, wordless noise and buried his face into Ignis’ chest, which was exactly what Ignis wanted him to do, because it then allowed him to wrap his arms around him and bask on it.

Ignis wasn’t a genius strategist for nothing, after all.


	59. mors last thoughts on cor

They’ll tear him apart, is the thing. He’d kept the secret and contented himself to a few badly timed jokes, plus the occasional pun that always ended up with Cor groaning and hanging his head.

But he’d kept the secret, and let Cor bask in the secret, because he wasn’t human any longer and it seemed dumb to Mors, to pretend otherwise. Cor had never been very good at being human in the first place anyway. The wolf suited him, and he suited the wolf, and so Mors had made sure to not use him overmuch, to let the secret linger and fester and only encourage a very specific kind of rumor.

But now the coup is done and Mors carries on his skin the burn of his people’s ire and he knows.

He knows.

They will take this boy and tear him apart, limb for limb. They will skin him and break him and crush him. And there won’t be anyone left, then, to save him, not with Mors dead and Regis gone.

If Mors had been strong enough, he would have sent the boy away alongside Regis. If Mors hadn’t grown used to the quiet voice asking how much sugar to put in his tea, the soft little snorts whenever he complained about stupidity, the the sharp, bright eyes following his every move… if he hadn’t grown fond and used and even relished in that, he’d have been strong enough to send him away.

He’d kept him instead, and he doomed him again, like he had that final night of the scourge, to remain and waste his life trying to prolong Mors’ own.

And now, now… there’s nowhere for him to go. There’s no one to take him in. No one to let him judge them for putting sugar in the tea, or give him tasks to accomplish so he won’t feel ignored. There’s no one to give him books to read, just to make sure he hasn’t forgotten his letters, or to explain what words mean, when he stumbles on them.

He should have sent him away, and he didn’t, and now they’ll both die for it.

Mors wraps his hands around that deceptively frail throat, and tells himself at least this way, it’ll be gentle. One last kindness to bestow, to the feral, stubborn boy who bent the knee and  _meant_  it.


	60. regis and cor have a chat about the galahdians

“So what’s it like?” Regis asks him, sitting on the steps of the cabin, watching the sun set and color the lake in lovely dark orange swaths of color. “Having a pack?”

Cor frowns into his mug. Regis is smoking the clover cigarettes that don’t leave behind the itchy kind of smoke that never fails to give Cor a migraine, and after years of chats sitting on these very steps and smelling that familiar smoke that can’t quite hide the scent that is uniquely Regis beneath it, Cor is almost unfairly trained to relax. He frowns and frowns at his mug, feeling the warmth of the tea ooze through the thick porcelain and into his hands, settling nice and comforting in the joints of his fingers.

Cor considers telling Regis to go fuck himself, but then he’s distracted thinking of Pelna trailing his fingers up his spine or the way Crowe’s hair smells near the nape of her neck, beneath the weirdly chemical-and-fruit scent of her soap, and the weight and warmth of Libertus pressing him down into the ground or Axis biting his throat until he’s got blood in his mouth. He thinks of waking up warm and sore, nose pressed up against the dip of Nyx’s collarbones, drunk in that lovely  _clean_  scent of his.

“‘s nice,” Cor mutters, face warm, and ducks his head to take a sip of his tea before it’s ruined.

Regis takes a long drag of his cigarette and releases it in concentric little rings, high above their heads.

“I wish I’d taken you with me,” he says, eyes sad, “to Galahd. You would have loved it there.”

Cor’s eyes dimmed and his posture changed, shoulders hunching over as his grip tightened dangerously on the mug.

“My place was by the King’s side,” he says, resolute, and then he wilts. It’s sharp and abrupt and it makes Regis’ ribs creak in his chest. “But that was then, and this is now.”

“This is now,” Regis agrees, and resists the urge to wrap an arm around those deceptively bony shoulders, just like he resists the urge to ask Cor if he’ll be following his pack back to Galahd, when the time comes.

The war, after all, will not last forever.


	61. cor and a pack of galahdian coeurls high as kites; part deux

Cor realized, with horror, that the spores were stuck to the fur of his legs and his belly, basically everything of his that was less than ten feet tall. Which meant that, even after he took his surprisingly not-squirmy, mostly-purring coeurls out of the cloud of spores over the swamp, they were still going to keep getting high just by getting close to him.

The obvious solution, was to wash the spores out.

The only problem was the fact he was… well, himself, and they were coeurls, and he didn’t know how well they took to water. Also the thought of contaminating a source of fresh water didn’t sit well with him, either. So he would have to improvise. One of the rings around the disc was hollow, the caverns flooding in summer with excess rain coming through the gaps at the top, and he knew they kept isolated from the rest of the area because the stone was thick and not porous enough to let it through before it evaporated.

So there was an idea.

Now he just needed to.

Make it happen.

 _Fuck_.

About four hours later, he managed to shuffle his dumb cats inside the cave, and while they were sprawled bonelessly out of the way, purring up a storm and swatting at each other, along with the occasional spark. It occurred to Cor, once he was done feeling unbearably smug and smart for conjuring up a lake-worth of water by judicious application of frost and flare, that he was going to be in a world of pain, the moment he tried to put one of them in water and they sparked at him. Because water conducted electricity.

 _ **Fuck**_.

He was. Unreasonably fluffy. By the time he was done, but that was that mess done. Thankfully. No one had died. He hadn’t bitten anyone until their bones went crunch, even though he’d felt tempted. He curled up on a pile of coeurls slowly coming from their high, and stubbornly set out to sleep.

He’d earned it, goddammit.


	62. sometimes the puppy is just a puppy

“It’s okay to admit you can’t, Puppy,” Crowe said with a grin, sitting on the edge of the dead haven, one leg folded up against her chest and the other hanging off the flat rock surface, swinging slightly. “We’re not going to think less of you for it or anything.”

Down on the side of the hill, lying on his side and looking eminently unamused, Cor stared up at her and made sure she was looking before he flicked his ears back twice in rapid succession, which they’d sort of unanimously agreed meant Cor would be offering a rude gesture with his hands, if he had them at the moment.

“Except we totally will,” Libertus joined in, legs folded under him and elbows on his knees as he smirked. “But it’s brave of you to admit your limits.”

Cor’s ears flicked again.

“Even if a small lapdog can beat those, apparently,” Axis added snidely, coming to sit next to Libertus with that sneery expression on his face that almost seemed a smile, except not quite.

Cor bared his teeth, on top of flicking his ears. Twice.

“They’re not going to stop until you try, you realize,” Pelna pointed out sensibly, stirring the pot of stew they were going to eat for dinner, and didn’t bother looking up.

Nyx watched in fascination as Cor digested this fact and let out a loud sigh as he stood up. He stretched and shook himself vigorously, and then curled around himself, reaching out to bite his own tail. He almost got it on the first try, but didn’t quite reach, and by the time he started snarling at himself in frustration, the trio of troublemakers watching on the front row were cheering and jeering him on.

It was kind of hilarious, admittedly, considering Cor’s size, and Nyx couldn’t help snickering a little when Cor picked up speed, jaws snapping just inches away from his tail.

Then he did catch it, and seemingly startled himself by it, because he lost his footing and Nyx was treated to the clearest  _oh shit_ expression on a wolf he’d ever seen in his life, before Cor whined and rolled neatly down the hill, off the edge of the cliff and came crashing down with a loud splash into the river some fifty feet below.

Nyx barked a laugh before he realized that was probably mean of him.

“I feel bad now,” Pelna said, frowning.

“I don’t,” Axis assured him.

Nyx sighed and put down his plate.

“I’m just going to make sure he actually survived that,” Nyx said, carefully not looking at their faces and the looks they were giving him, “and, you know, convincing him not to  _eat_ you for your trouble.”

He didn’t stick around to hear what Crowe said about that.

It was probably for the best.


	63. Cor is allergic to pity

“You don’t know what it was like,” Cor snarled, quiet and stern, “to wake up every morning and have to do headcounts and always come back missing one or two, and never finding the bodies, just the puddles of blood where the daemons got them. You don’t know what it’s like, to see the taint take root, crawling under someone’s skin until it burst like a ripe boil, and then they were gone and all that was left was a monster that was everything they weren’t. You don’t know what it’s like to live at the mercy of the Oracle and her fucking self-righteous pity, so sad, the scourge, but it is the will of the gods, what can we do?”

Cor spat at the ground.

“The scourge took my family and my homeland, it was the anvil to the war’s hammer, grinding us all to nothing. Mors wanted it gone, knew he needed it gone if any of us had any hope of surviving, and you know what they said? You’re not the Chosen King, you can’t do nothing but father children who’ll father children of their own, and maybe one of them will be the one to end this.  _It’s the will of the gods._ ”

He laughed.

“Mors Lucis Caelum told the gods to go fuck themselves and  _he ended the scourge_. He was a stubborn, stupid man and no one liked him, ‘cause he never learned to be polite. He was blunt and callous and did what needed doing, not what was convenient or noble to do. He took a feral twelve year old that wanted blood and retribution, and put him to work where blood and retribution were to be had. He left me to die, every time, and he told me it would be better if I did. I was the one who was stubborn and came home every damn time, with scars to prove I did. Lucius chided him for it. Told it him it was unsightly to keep a child soldier at his side.”

Cor sneered.

“The court  _loved_ to gossip about why the King kept a child at his back at all times. Mors didn’t care, and he didn’t put me through anything I didn’t want to do. He left me to die over and over again, right up to the last time, when the Crystal broke. He didn’t have anything else for me to die for after that, so he just used me to cull the court and weed out the vipers, for when Regis’ came home. It’s easy to judge when you weren’t there. It’s easy to sneer when you don’t know shit. I picked my trade long before I met the King. The King was just the first man I met who didn’t pity me for it, who let my ply it for my keep.”


	64. mors continues to have complicated feelings about cor

He was small, against the steps, skin pale with bloodloss and swords fallen nearby, framing his small limbs. Mors never really noticed, not quite, how truly ludicrously long Cor’s swords were, mismatched set he used to slaughter anything Mors pointed him at, until that moment. Because Cor was always moving, shifting, boundless nervous energy badly packed inside his bones, under his skin.

Now he was quiet, deadly so, sprawled gracelessly against the steps leading up to the ruins, fallen where the line had fallen with him, scant twenty feet away from the entrance, but twenty feet that made a difference. There had been enough horrors within Pitioss’ walls, and Cor had saved them from facing countless more, by holding the line right where he did. Mors wished the corpses of his victims remained, to have something tangible to keep tally and know how much guilt he was going to have to ignore, about this. But all that was left around Cor were the marks on the ground, ghosts of his fights, and nothing else. There were the marks on the boy, of course, clothes torn and caked with blood, but that only invited one to imagine the worst, and Mors had a terrible imagination.

“Mors,” Lucius whispered, voice hollow, watching him tug off his jacket from his shoulders and wrap it up around the boneless limbs of the boy.

“He’s alive,” Mors replied, and marveled somewhat at the ease with which he could carry him. He expected him to be heavier, to defy his age and be… something that didn’t bite dully at Mors’ conscience. It didn’t matter, he was good at ignoring that, at this point. “Or you’d rather I left him for dead?”

It was what Cor would want, Mors knew. But Cor had agreed to serve him, to exist at his discretion, and what Cor wanted and what Mors needed were not at all the same.

He just wanted something out of this fucking bitter mess to work out fine.

Just the one thing.

It might as well be Cor living through it.

“You don’t have magic anymore,” Lucius said, instead, staring at the boy in Mors’ arms and politely sidestepping the fact he looked like only magic could save him.

“The age of magic is over,” Mors hissed back and started walking down the stairs, muddy with Cor’s blood, back towards the Imperial camp the Emperor set up closer to Ravatogh. “The Gods are gone, Lucius. Men fend for themselves now.”

Lucius stared down at him - Mors was a short man, unassuming, he never had any claim to any glorious destiny, and certainly never looked like he did - lips pressed into a thin line, and the nodded.

“Let me,” he offered, reaching out to pull Cor out of his arms, “you must be tired.”

Mors stepped back, tightening his hold until Cor whimpered against his throat, and he loosened his grip slightly.

“No,” he said, and refused to explain himself.


	65. gladio and the realities of being a shield without a king

Wednesdays are his favorite days in the week.

Wednesdays are closer to Fridays than Monday, yes, but also Wednesdays are the days the poetry club meets in the greenhouse the gardening club lends them out on condition they “support the green” in the Student Council. Gladio’s a senior this year, and he knows he looms. He’s broad shoulders and calloused hands, and that’s often all that most people need to know about him. It suits him better, that way. The people shrewd enough to see past that, to give consideration to his wit and his sense of humor, they’re also the people shrewd enough to know him for what he is.

A Shield without a King.

He tries not to think about it much. No one does. Not his dad, not his sister. His mother does, but only because she thinks about everything, but her thoughts are best never voiced on that one thing, they border on treacherous sometimes. She’s the reason Gladio’s been allowed to finish school first, before diving into the Crownsguard - the only reason, he realizes, he’s been given a choice about joining the Crownsguard - since he has no King to serve, no Prince to groom and guide and protect, so there’s no need for him to live his life like he does.

Gladio loves Wednesdays best, because he can sit in the hot, sweet air of the greenhouse and argue metric and rhyme and symbolism for three hours, and no one thinks it’s weird.

It’s better than spending three hours in his father’s office, staring at the tips of wings peeking from under his sleeves, and trying to soak it all in even if the thought of being groomed to become Regent rather than Shield makes him want to hurl. His father is very pragmatic about it, though. The King is old now. The King will not live forever.

 _The King has no heir_.

Thus it’ll be Gladio’s turn, eventually, to rule Lucis once day, as a Shield must, at least until a suitable side branch of the family is found and the Crystal accepts it.

Except there’s no Crystal anymore.

Gladio likes Wednesdays best, full of beautiful words twisted into beautiful worlds that don’t make him feel forever too small for his own bones. At least, he thinks desperately, Iris will be spared this nonsense.

At least.


	66. long after everything is said and done, Nyx has something to ask Cor

Nyx watched Cor meticulously organize everything they’d bought during their outing. No matter how much time he spent in the cabin, there was always a strange sense of eerie wonder in watching Cor navigate the space, if only because he was so consistently unguarded and comfortable there. Nyx liked it when he looked that way: relaxed. It didn’t happen as often as he’d like, but he was always a little flattered when it did happen and he was around to see it.

“So I’ve been thinking,” Nyx said, as Cor moved to the bag of tea and began putting the tins in their place, stacked neatly on one another. “I miss having the kids around.”

Cor paused mid-stretch, muscles of his back on full display.

“You threatened to kill them three times a day,” he pointed out, blinking slowly before frowning at Nyx. “Sometimes more.”

Nyx flushed.

“I mean. Yes,” he admitted, and then chewed the inside of his bottom lip. “But I still. Y’know. Miss them.”

Cor’s frown deepened for a moment, and then he shook his head and went back to stacking tins.

“Do you miss them or do you miss the idea of them?” He asked, not looking at Nyx, so not giving Nyx a chance to see what his face looked like as he asked.

“You’ve been spending too much time with Titus,” Nyx muttered, rather than answer directly, “you’re getting philosophical on me.”

“Probably,” Cor agreed, and then gave Nyx a small smirk over his shoulder. “He told me we were going to have this conversation.”

“What conversation?” Nyx asked, licking his lips and feeling his face heat up. “I’m just. Y’know. Making small talk.”

Cor tilted his head so he could stare at Nyx for a long time, and then sighed. But it was a fond sigh. The kind of sigh he gave when small children recognized him on the street when he was doing an errand, and asked to see his magic. Cor always stopped and gathered a crowd and suffered questions before going his way. It made Nyx’s insides twitch dramatically at the thought.

“You won’t know what I think unless you ask me,” Cor told him, which was true enough, but also tasted of Titus’ shrewdness in places.

Nyx chewed his lip some more, while Cor waited for him to decide if they were having A Conversation, or just more idle talk.

Nyx sighed and gathered aplomb.

“Do you want to start a family with me?”


	67. Cor and Mors bonding

“You have a room of your own,” Mors said, staring at the canvas above the imposing double bed he’d inherited from his father and never really bothered to change because it was still sturdy and serviceable enough. “It’s got a bed, and everything.”

At the foot of the bed, sitting on the carpet with his back against the massive wooden frame, Cor sat with his sword propped against his shoulder, curled into a little ball just like he’d done in the camp, when he parked himself next to Mors makeshift bed for the night and glowered murderously at anyone who entered the tent. But this was the Citadel. It… wasn’t exactly appropriate for the King to keep a fourteen year old in his room. Lucius had Lectured about it, with a capital and then drank himself stupid on Mors’ favorite whiskey, as he bitched about the fact he had to do damage control for it.

“Don’t care,” Cor muttered, placid and uncaring as he always was.

Mors reckoned he was smug, the little shit, over the fact he’d survived Pitioss. Mors had assured him he would not, and then Cor went out of his way to do it. Lucius had drunk quite a bit about that one too.

“I’m  _ordering_ you to go away,” Mors muttered spitefully, rubbing his face with one hand and willing away the migraine so he might actually get some fucking sleep for a change.

Cor snorted.

“No,” he said matter-of-fact, “you’re not dying on my watch.”

It happened just as Mors opened his mouth to deride that comment. It was short and lightning fast and the next thing he knew there was a splotch of blood on the ceiling, a head rolling across the floor towards the window, a body crumpling to the floor and Cor hissing a swear, like the sword currently stuck in his gut was a minor inconvenience.

Mors did not panic.

Mors had stood up against the gods themselves and watched them shriek and vanish alongside the crystal. Mors Lucis Caelum did not  _panic_. Even as he grabbed Cor’s shoulders - so small, so wretchedly, stupidly small - to help him upright and instinctively tried to call upon magic he didn’t have anymore.

“Lucius!” Mors called for, and it was not at all a frantic, panicked scream. Of course not, even though the stupid boy was going white and there was a sword right through his gut that had probably been meant to go through Mors’ own, and he kept tugging at the magic in his blood except he’d burned that bridge forever, and-

Lucius stumbled in, wine-addled unsteady feet and all, and then he snorted and pulled a potion out of the armiger - because just because Mors was permanently cut off from his magic didn’t mean his magic didn’t exist, it was still  _there_ , the armiger proved it, it just wasn’t  _his_ anymore - and smashed it entirely too unkindly for Mors’ tastes on Cor’s head.

“You’re welcome,” the insufferable little shitstain deadpanned, once he was done not dying in Mors’ arms, politely ignoring the fact Mors had left a perfect indent of his fingers bruised on the pale skin of his shoulders in the process of waiting for him to not die after all.

Lucius laughed at the look on Mors’ face. He wasn’t laughing when, the next morning, Mors ordered the massive bed removed from his quarters and replaced by two smaller ones. Mors refused to acknowledge the smug tilt to Cor’s lips the entire day. Just because he had a point and maybe Mors had miscalculated how long it’d take his countrymen to try and murder the shit out of him, it didn’t mean he was going to go around letting the kid have  _ideas_. 

Mors had the last laugh anyway, enjoying the look on Cor’s face when he ordered him to join Regis’ retinue the month after.


	68. Prompto, Cor, Birthdays and The Great Fucking Frozen Wastelands

“This is the lousiest birthday,” Prompto pointed out, so far past resigned, he circled back into amused, “officially. I’m… I’m making a decree and everything.”

Outside, The Great Frozen Wastelands continued to be… well, frozen and wasted. Whether there was actually land somewhere in there was still up in the air, what with the fact their escort had taken one clanking step forward into the snowfields and sank some ten feet straight down when the snow failed to support their weight. Shoddy, poorly structurally designed snowbank, Prompto did not curse out loud, if only because it would be petty.

Cor poked at the fire - literally, because of course he did, he was fucking indestructible and also possibly 99% made of magic,  _literally_ \- until it was burning bright and warm again, and stared up at Prompto with that blank face of his that meant he was going to ask Prompto something that would invariably make him question his conception of the world.

“Why?” He asked, perfectly placid, as he put a pot of snow to melt over the fire and set out to make tea.

Prompto did not tell him he was sick of tea. No one did, even though they were. That would be mean, and it was a well known and perfectly unspoken rule that  _no one_  was mean to Cor. And not just because Nyx got twitchy and murdery when you did. It was  _Cor_. Torturing small animals would be less outright evil than being openly mean to Cor.

Prompto stared at the blizzard howling outside the cave and tried to find words - tiny, precise, sensible words, the sort Cor liked - to explain the many, many shitty things that had gone wrong with his birthday. He felt extremely petty, at the end of the exercise, which is why he resorted to just shrugging awkwardly and refusing to explain.

“They’re taking a really long time to get back,” Prompto said instead, because it was true, and because he wasn’t in the mood to feel like a soulless evil tyrant on his  _birthday_. “The village is just two miles out.”

Cor hummed in the back of his throat and nodded in the general direction of the cave’s entrance.

“There’s a blizzard,” he pointed out, helpful, because he wasn’t an asshole, even if he sometimes made Prompto’s head hurt. “Probably why.”

“What was your birthday like?” Prompto asked him, rather than risk walking out into the blizzard and laughing until he cried.

Cor stared at him.

“I don’t have a birthday,” he said, head tilted to the side. 

Prompto remembered when he’d first met Cor, and thought him strange in weird yet easily ignorable ways. Sometimes, and he felt supremely dickish about it, he wished he could go back to those days of blissful ignorance.

“Everyone has a birthday,” Prompto said, patient and kind and not at all letting his frayed nerves show. “Everyone was born at some point. So, the anniversary of that day would be your birthday.”

“Birthdays are for people,” Cor replied, and didn’t go on, more out of habit of what happened when he finished the thought -  _and I’m not_  - than any real conviction, Prompto was sure.

“Doesn’t matter,” Prompto pointed out, shaking his head, “ _I_ ’ve got a birthday, why wouldn’t  _you_?” When Cor looked like he was going to argue that point, Prompto raised his wrist and shook it meaningfully. “Unspeakably creepy lab experiments get birthdays, cool giant magic wolf people get birthdays too.”

Cor frowned, but didn’t outright argue the point.

Prompto knew it was dickish. He knew. It was manipulative and a little insensitive and it skated too close along the edge of that all important, forbidden area of being mean to Cor. He still said it anyway:

“It’d make Nyx happy, if you had one.” Prompto shrugged when Cor squinted at him suspiciously. “You could celebrate together. That’s the best part of birthdays, being around the people that matter.” There was a pause. “And cake. Cake is always nice. But mostly the people you care about most.”

“I’ll think about it,” Cor said, very reluctantly and not quite enthused about the prospect.

Prompto decided that was enough group therapy with his fellow inhuman abomination and went to sit by the fire and drink tea in silence with him instead.

Three hours later, he willingly recanted his decree when the others finally came back with, among other things, cake. Homemade cake, even. Because Ignis.

Turned out not even the Great Frozen Wastelands could compare with that.


	69. Cor, from serving Mors to serving Regis

“We’re all going to die.”

Cor was thirteen, the first time he heard that line, in Mors’ steady, bland tone, sitting around the fire in a haven lost somewhere in the Duscae marshes.

That was Mors, in a nutshell. Grim, solemn, bland, deadpan and absolutely matter-of-fact. He welcomed Cor into his inner circle, that empty ring of seats around the fire, while the blood of the men who’d tried to kill him crusted under Cor’s nails.

“He’s just a kid,” Lucius had said, because Lucius, Cor would soon learn, was the sort of rational, sensible men that naturally orbited catastrophic disasters the like of Mors.

“Fuck off,” Cor had snarled, he remembered, years later, teeth bare and eyes feral, long before he found his shape inside larger bones.

He still felt bad about that, when he remembered, even if he hadn’t known any better at the time: Lucius was soft and nice and not at all deserving of that kind of snarl. But back then Cor had been elbows and knees and two swords that combined weighted more than he did, and he didn’t know people came in flavors other than spiteful, shitty and mean. Discovering Lucius’ kindness had been earth-shattering, for no other reason that no one had ever bothered to be kind to Cor before, and it would take him months to learn to stop fearing it and let himself enjoy it.

But that first night, there was someone else by the fire, a figure that looked at Cor without any of Mors’ blank acceptance or Lucius’ badly hidden concern. Someone who leered at him, teeth glinting in a smile that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

“Dying is for losers,” the figure said, who would eventually introduce herself as Lyra Argentum, all the vicious, reckless madness that made Cor feel small and he hated her for it.

He hated her more when it turned out she was the first one to die, and he missed her enough to get tears stuck in his throat because of it.

Lyra was hateable like that. They all were, really, from the King to his inner circle. They were all misshapen, twisted, broken things, made sharp by necessity of all the things they needed to tear down so their King could lay the foundations for the world he wanted to leave behind.

“We’re all going to die,” Mors said, over and over again, more like a prayer than a warning, more so after Lyra was no longer there to cackle unrepentantly and call him names.

They were all going to die, of course, that was always part of the plan. They were going to die, so it didn’t matter if they were hated. If they were tortured. If they were feared. They were the bearers of all the sins of the old world, all the hatred and the lies and all the unspeakable things men did and called it war. But they would die, and they would take them with them, and the new world would be better because of it.

The worst of it, Cor thought, sitting on the roof of his home, legs swinging over the edge as he stared up at the sky, splattered with muted stars, drowned by the lights of the city all around.

The worst of it was that they’d believed Mors, when he’d told them that.

He had.

Did.

Cor hadn’t died. He’d stood around the fire, time and time again, and did each and every unspeakable thing that was asked of him, and he’d soaked in the promise until it fed the marrow of his bones and gave him reason to keep on. Bur he didn’t die. He didn’t die in Pitioss. He didn’t die in the Crag. He didn’t die in Altissia.

He didn’t die in Insomnia.

Instead he was forced to stand there and watch: Lyra and her grin and her vest full of explosive, poisonous things. Lucius and his little silver flask, hidden in the lapels of his jacket, dulling his tongue so he wasn’t quite as sharp as he could be. Mors on his throne, bitterness clogging up his veins, spreading that foulness into his very soul, all that anger and hate pooled into his lungs, seeping in deeper than intended.

He watched them laugh. He watched them cry. He watched them die.

And in the end, he wasn’t quite inside the circle, it turned out, because he was left behind. His anger and his hate was not forgiven, was not granted release from the pressure of existing. He was left alone, standing on the charred remains of the old world, as the new world unfurled around him and bloomed in ways they never thought it would.

And Cor understood, if nothing else, this one thing: there was a reason Mors promised them death as their payment. There was a reason they were not meant to see what kind of fortune their blood would pay for. 

It never felt like it was worth it.

…well.

“Cor,” Regis said, coming to stand before the cabin, small and insignificant and yet still the last good reason Cor had to keep him from burning the whole world to ashes out of spite.

Almost.


	70. Ardyn, on Galahdian coeurls...

“That’s new,” Ardyn said, point three seconds before Nyx pounced on him with enough strength, they sank several feet into the snow. “Unwelcome, but new,” Ardyn clarified, staring unfazed at the coeurl’s jaws snarling half an inch away from his face.

“Nyx!” Noctis yelled, and then ducked as he felt the rush of air above his head as Cor leaped into the scene, since the tip of Nyx’s whiskers were starting to light up with sparks and nothing good ever followed from that.

Not that Ardyn could die, in theory.

But, as they’d discovered, Ardyn was the sort of petty asshole to hold attempts on his life over their heads, regardless of the actual probability of any of them reaching the intended effect. And then Cor had to get involved, and then Odin had to get involved, and then it was a terrible, terrible mess.

“I’m going to be 100% honest with you,” Ardyn said, adjusting his hat and staring up at Prompto with a faintly amused expression on his face.

“That’s a first,” Noctis hissed loudly, yet supposedly under his breath, and ignored Gladio and Ignis nudging him to stop provoking Ardyn.

“I was quite positively sure Galahdian crows about their coeurls were metaphoric,” Ardyn went on, graciously ignoring Noctis’ outburst. “Evidently, I was wrong.”

Prompto closed his eyes, counted to three, reached out a hand to grab one of the handles in Odin’s casing, to keep her from piping up and making things worse, finished counting to ten, and then sighed very, very loudly.

“Isn’t it fun?” He said, in the tones of one contemplating slow painful death, “the novelty of it?”

In the background, they saw the ball of lightning of Nyx’s death trap attack ignite, barely missing them, and then heard the pained yelp of Cor still trying to smother him down.

“You’re cute, darling,” Ardyn said, looking at him under the rim of his hat, “don’t push it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come hang out on [DW](https://notavodkashot.dreamwidth.org/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/notavodkashot), if you'd like.


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